It’s business class for the PM

Those finding it necessary to do without life’s little luxuries can find consolation in the fact that the new austerity pinches everyone.

British Prime Minister David Cameron, returning earlier this week from his first trip to the United States after he assumed office, flew home in a business-class seat on a scheduled British Airways flight.

Cameron, trying to cut Britain’s deficit, its largest since the Second World War, is scaling back on the chartered jets his predecessors used for overseas travel and has told his staff to book him on regular flights.

While in the US, he also took a scheduled train, travelling from New York from Washington on Amtrak’s Acela train.

“We have got a lot of money to save. We’ve got a very big budget deficit, so we can’t go spending money on executive planes, sadly,” he told ABC News.

Cameron’s office estimates it is saving several hundred thousand pounds by forgoing chartered jets.

His ancestors may include King Henry VII and at least seven earls, but they did not need to avoid the perception of splashing public money around on travel while they were cutting welfare payments to the poor.

But he also took the austerity drive further: instead of stopping in at one of the city’s many Michelin-star restaurants, while in New York he got city mayor Michael Bloomberg to join him outside Penn Station for a hot dog.

“He just wants to show that, in every aspect of his life, his behaviour is exemplary,” Bloomberg quoted Bill Jones, a professor of politics at Liverpool Hope University, as saying. “He’s overdoing it, he’s over-spinning. People don’t expect him to travel on his bike.”