Mine's smaller than yours

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In scenes vaguely reminiscent of the Four Yorkshiremen, it seems that the so-called ‘leaders’ of the UK and Canada got themselves into a debate in Germany over who had arrived in the smallest private jet. At a mere 45 metres long, Johnson’s A321 Airbus beat Trudeau’s 47 metre Airbus CC-150 in the aircraft poverty stakes. How many people were in Johnson’s retinue is not recorded, but it’s doubtful whether it was anywhere near the 170 – 220 which an A321 is normally capable of carrying.

Johnson did, however, cheat in order to win the game. (Nothing new there of course.) It seems that he only won because he was in the backup aircraft, rather than his usual transport, which is a 60 metre long Voyager variant of the Airbus A330 (normally configured, in civilian use, for anything up to 406 passengers). That, however, was unavailable, because the monarchy have first call on its use, and Charles Windsor had exercised his royal privilege to bag the plane for himself. Presumably to make sure that there was adequate space for his official toilet seat, and enough cupboards to hold carrier bags full of cash should he happen, in the course of his travels, to bump into any rich sheiks looking to relieve themselves of a spare few million quid.

Johnson’s victory over Trudeau because of the use of the royal trump card does, however, bring us to the question that no-one seems to have asked. Both Johnson and Windsor travelled from the same starting point (London) to the same destination (Rwanda) to attend the same meeting, and each used a separate enormous aircraft to do so. And while Johnson then travelled on to Germany leaving the heir to the throne in Kigale, the bigger plane continued to sit on the runway at Kigale until such time as its passenger returns home. Whilst we know that the two men are not exactly the best of bosom buddies at the moment, they both claim to be strong supporters of action on climate change, something which is not exactly easy to square with use of large private jets. Surely either one of the planes would have been quite large enough for them to sit far enough apart that they didn’t even need to acknowledge each other. One each side of the cash cupboards perhaps. Is it really beyond the wit of those purporting to run the UK to organise itineraries such that one plane would have sufficed?