But the algorithm has seen top students downgraded and some were failed altogether if they go to a school that has had poor results in the past. Hundreds of students protested, calling the results an injustice.

Conservative backbench MPs were also reportedly furious at the government in approving the algorithm system, despite concerns raised by the House of Commons education select committee in July. Johnson only a few days ago had described the marking system as “robust and dependable”.

A spokesperson for 10 Downing Street confirmed the prime minister was on holiday in Scotland, but did not say where exactly or with whom.

Twitter was awash with rumours he was staying at the posh golfing hotel Fairmont in St Andrews Scotland, owned by the Hong Kong company Great Century. But a receptionist at the hotel told South China Morning Post that Johnson was not there.

What shampoo does Boris Johnson prefer? UK press in lather over access to PM

Or is he, as some media has claimed, on a camping holiday in the Scottish Highlands, famous for its bad weather and biting midges with his 32-year-old fiancée Carrie Symonds and their three-month baby Wilfred?

“Boris and Carrie are going to spend part of their Scottish holiday camping,” Petronella Wyatt, a journalist who dated Johnson for four years when he was married to his second wife Marine Wheeler reportedly told friends online.

“That will finish off their relationship. Boris can’t cook and Carrie only likes luxe private villas in hot places.”, The Daily Mail reported her as saying.

Another theory was that he was camping in the grounds of Balmoral, the queen’s Scottish castle where she was staying.

Wherever Boris has chosen to have his “staycation”, it was seen as poor timing as the UK lurches from one crisis to another.

“What exactly is Boris Johnson taking a holiday from? It’s certainly not work,” tweeted the anti-Johnson radio chat show host James O’Brien.

Boris Johnson calls anti-vaxxers ‘nuts’, warns of second spike

It is not the first time Johnson has been taken a break amid a national or international crisis.

In the summer of 2011, when he was mayor of London and riots broke out, Johnson was criticised for taking three days to come back from his camping holiday in the Canadian Rockies with his then wife Wheeler.

In January, he was found to be in a luxury hideaway villa on the private Caribbean island of Mustique when a US drone killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, and as news was coming out of China about its coronavirus outbreak.

He then missed five important emergency cabinet meetings to discuss the virus, and for at least one of them he was instead at Chevening, the prime minister’s grace-and-favour country home in Kent. He was also there when Storm Denis flooded many parts of the country. He appears to spend most weekends at the other prime minister country residence Chequers, where he also convalesced for two weeks following a stint in hospital with coronavirus in April.

As criticism mounted at Johnson’s current holiday, Daily Mail columnist Sarah Vine tweeted: “Being prime minister is 24/7. The stress alone is incomprehensible. People make bad decisions when they are tired and stressed”.

Many interpreted her tweet as a veiled snipe. Vine is also wife of the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster Michael Gove, who is one of those eyeing Johnson’s job.

Boris Johnson’s next target: reopen England’s schools

When Johnson returns from his break, he has personally pledged to oversee the safe return of schools next month.

Williamson for now seems safe in his job, even as several Conservative MPs suggested he could become the fall guy.

He was photographed Tuesday with a leather whip placed strategically at the front of his desk. It could have been a sign he was no public-school whipping boy, or as some commentators claimed, a message to Johnson he knows of skeletons from his time as the Conservative Party chief whip under the former prime minister Theresa May.

Additional reporting by Bloomberg