From Blair to Burnham, jogging as political metaphor has just run and run

Ed Miliband and George Osborne jogging. Composite: Alamy, Shutterstock

And he is certainly not the first politician to conclude that the path to power in Britain might best be negotiated in leisurewear. John Major may have been more of a cricket man, but from Tony Blair’s government onwards rare has been the leading politician not seen with their legs in lycra for the sake of political advancement … Sorry, I mean for the sake of their health.

Tony Blair takes part in a mile run with the Welsh athlete Colin Jackson to raise money for charity in 2004. Photograph: Michael Stephens/AFP/Getty Images

“I couldn’t do this job unless I kept a certain level of physical fitness,” said a youthful, vigorous Blair shortly after running a mile for Sport Relief in 2006. “I take a lot of exercise now and I make time for it,” commented a healthy, energetic Blair while dressed in a shell suit and promoting a good diet the same year.

Gordon Brown, Blair’s successor as prime minister, may not have been principally known for his love of athleisure-clad photoshoots, but even he succumbed, photographed jogging in a London park in 2009. Brown does go jogging when he has the opportunity, a Downing Street spokesperson told reporters. “We didn’t set it up.”

David Cameron jogs runs along the Blackpool seafront. Photograph: Stefan Rousseau/AFP/Getty Images

David Cameron led his security detail on a twice-weekly run around London parks so full of tourists that he was rarely recognised. Just another “middle-aged, slightly overweight” jogger “trotting past”, he said, with great modesty.

Cameron’s favoured attire was black shorts, to the extent that an appearance in black tracksuit bottoms earned him concerned pieces in the Daily Telegraph. Michael Gove was pictured more frequently out for a jog as his own prime ministerial ambitions sharpened, but in polo shirts and hoodies he never quite looked the part.

Michael Gove out for a run in London in 2019. Photograph: Tolga Akmen/AFP/Getty Images

Then came Boris Johnson, who dressed for his jogs like a man who had rummaged through the full depth of the laundry basket, sporting brightly patterned Bermuda shorts, beanie hats and, on occasions, dress shoes. A business shirt with shorts and black shoes, you say? Why not?

Boris Johnson waves at photographers as he runs near his Oxfordshire home in 2018. Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/LNP

In her Downing Street tenure, Liz Truss was said to enjoy early morning circuits of the nearby Lambeth Palace grounds, to which she would invite key advisers. “The invitations to the runs are coveted and feared in equal measure,” a source told the Daily Mail.

Liz Truss jogs over Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Photograph: Simon Dawson/Downing Street

There have also been running refuseniks. She may have once, naughtily, run through a field, but Theresa May liked walking holidays. Kemi Badenoch prefers the gym – while her ministerial driver waits outside.

Theresa May works as a race steward at the Maidenhead 10-mile Easter fun run in 2018. Photograph: David Hartley/REX/Shutterstock

Starmer isn’t much of a jogger either, though he has tried, even while in Downing Street, to keep playing weekly in the same five-a-side team he has been a member of for decades.

“Unless I’m irreparably injured, I intend to do it for as long as I possibly can,” the prime minister has said. About the football, that is. But then politicians do like metaphors.