The start of this month has seen the US economy downgraded for the first time in 70 years of credit ratings from AAA status to AA status; the EU also faces its most serious challenge in its 66 year history as sovereign debt crisis looks to be moving in the direction of Italy now. This news was received by the Prime Minister David Cameron who was holidaying in his £4,000 a week Tuscan villa for ten days. The Prime Minister made the subsequent decision to keep calm and carry on holidaying however with his entourage of personnel aides, secretaries and security personnel as Downing Street insisted that he was still in charge of the country and was “abreast of developments”. The chancellor for the exchequer George Osborne was in a similar situation as he was holidaying in his Californian home. Naturally the riots of the few days later put paid to all this resting - MPs get nearly 20 weeks of holiday unlike the rest of us! 

The news was met by a series of telephone calls by world leaders and finance ministers who were holding conversations and meetings over the weekend via secure phone lines. With British chancellor George Osborne speaking to the French finance minister, Francois Barion, and the EU finance commissioner, Olli Rehn, and the IMF chief Christine Lagarde on Saturday evening. The recent events have been described by various political pundits as a “Sun-lounger Summit” as various politicians discussed the latest instalment of the capitalist crisis from beaches and the side of swimming pools. This news put the French president Nicolas Sarkozy who currently holds the G7 presidency under increasing pressure to call an emergency summit by phone on the 6th of August. President Sarkozy who is currently holidaying in the French Riviera has been matched by other world leaders such as German chancellor Angela Merkel who is on a walking holiday with her husband in the Italian Dolomites, she does not however have very far to travel in order to meet Italian president Silvio Berlusconi who is staying at his luxury villa near Milan. US president Obama was also on holidaying as he spent the weekend in the presidential retreat of Camp David.

The British Prime Minister David Cameron had left the foreign secretary William Hague in charge of the country. He was however to take some action by convening a meeting of government officials on Friday, he was however later to attend his country residence of Chevening for the weekend. The only world leader to be at their desk was Olli Rehn a Finnish politician, currently serving as European Commissioner for Economic and Financial Affairs who cut short his holiday and rushed back to Brussels. The Independent on Sunday went onto joke in reference to Prime Minister David Cameron that “one could unkindly point out that this was his only first-hand experience of an Italian debt crisis” as he holidayed in Tuscany. Little only 18 days earlier The Financial Times closed an article entitled “Britain’s Ruling Class Needs a Good Holiday” by Bruce Anderson on the 21st of July with the following comment,

“Betwixt and between, Mr Cameron should take four steps, three of which are in his control: first, to ensure he and his people have a proper holiday; second, to refer all questions about News International to the planned official inquiry; third, to plan an autumn offensive, when he will draw on his formidable rhetorical skills to express his political vision. Fourth, to hope that the euro’s disintegration will not mean the disintegration of Europe’s economy. There is a final add-on: to hope for a successful recuperation by the English summer, so that all sensible persons forget politics for the next two months”

The article came as a reaction to the stress and strains that were being placed upon the coalition government and the British ruling class during the news international crisis; as the on-going economic crisis deepens and is subsequently reflected in the political superstructure of society. The economic crisis of 2008 has taken its toll on the economy in many ways one way is shown in a recent poll of 2000 respondents carried out on June the 21st by finance and banking giant ING Direct which has shown that 39% of Britons this year would not be taking a summer holiday. If this figure is to broadened out as a representative sample of Brits it means 17.7 million will be staying at home this summer. The research showed that 9 out of 10 who said they were not going to take a holiday this summer would normally have taken a holiday. The polling data also indicated that the number of British families taking a trip abroad is down by 3% in the 12 months prior to April as compared to the previous period. An ING Direct spokesman Richard Doe said: "It’s clear that a tough economic climate is causing consumers to pull off a very difficult balancing act – cutting down on debt while dealing with rising prices”. He then went onto comment, "So it’s not surprising that the summer holiday is often being sacrificed. However, it is certainly a good thing that consumers are adopting a more sensible approach to holiday planning, saving in advance for their trips, rather than entirely relying on the plastic."

Small concessions that can be granted to the working class such as holidays abroad in times of economic boom via extra credit by the ruling class are now very quickly being taken back in an attempt to maintain profits and restore lost economic equilibrium and stability. These attacks on workers material living conditions by austerity, inflation, wage cuts, and a reduction in cheap credit have lead people to question the capitalist system that society is based upon and in effect causing turmoil within the political superstructure of society as we have seen with the MP’s expenses scandal, the NoW scandal, and various Wiki-leaks scandals. In essence every attempt by the bourgeois and reformists to restore the economic equilibrium has the effect of destroying the social and political equilibrium. The objective conditions for the socialist revolution are now rather ripe rotten and these fresh attacks on the working class by the ruling class as they take a well-deserved summer holiday from austerity package’s and sovereign debt crisis’s are now preparing the ground for an explosion of the class struggle as the bourgeoisie toboggans with its eyes open towards an economic catastrophe.