Just over 20 years ago Neil Kinnock, sinking in the polls, embarked on an 11-day tour of southern Africa aimed at boosting his credibility as a world statesman and so lifting his dire ratings with the voters.

The trip could not have gone worse. The Labour leader’s aircraft landed by mistake in the wrong airfield — a military airstrip near the Mozambique border — while his official welcoming party from the Harare High Commission was miles away up a mountain. Far from a red carpet, a few trumpets, bunting and a team of senior diplomats, the aircraft was met by Zimbabwean soldiers, armed with AK47 rifles, who then forced Mr Kinnock’s party into a hut as they traded expletives with him.

It is a cautionary tale for political leaders hoping to beef up their waning status at home and distance themselves from domestic strife. Far from being perceived as a world statesman, with the clout to present Britain as a global leader, a politician can end up with egg on his face.

Gordon Brown has certainly made himself known in the past few months on the international stage. In February the Prime Minister popped to Italy to meet Silvio Berlusconi and the Pope. In March he nipped to Washington to meet Barack Obama to remind the President of Britain’s special relationship and to press for reform of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Financial Stability Forum.

A brief stint at home was followed by a tour to Strasbourg, New York, Brazil and Chile to drum up support for a pre-G20 global co-ordinated fiscal stimulus package to reverse the world recession.

Last Tuesday Mr Brown returned from a two-day tour of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Poland using a chartered BA Boeing 777, costing the British taxpayer an estimated £350,000. Mr Brown’s agenda detailed fairly ambitious stuff. Meeting President Karzai of Afghanistan, President Zardari of Pakistan, and Donald Tusk, the Polish Prime Minister, to discuss the fight against terrorism, the AfghanPakistani border, the use of financial aid and the funding of an Auschwitz Holocaust memorial.

Mr Brown’s incessent globetrotting makes him almost as much of a frequent flyer as Tony Blair after the 9/11 attacks, when he was constantly on the move to shore up the international coalition. In the past two months alone Mr Brown has had two weeks out of the country, visited eight countries, some more than once.

Last year figures released by Downing Street showed that he had already spent almost £1 million on foreign travel in his first year in No 10 and had travelled more than once around the world. At the weekend, it emerged that Labour’s appetite for foreign travel is so great that David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is hiring a permanent private jet for his foreign trips.

But even in the near 30C heat in Camp Bastion, Afghanistan, thanking the troops for their sacrifices, Mr Brown found it difficult to distance himself from the troubles he left behind — reform of MPs’ expenses, the deteriorating state of Britain’s finances, soaring unemployment and a row over how student visas have become a gateway for terrorism — all of which were raised on the most recent trip.

Apart from Kinnock-style gaffes, the risks of travelling overseas amid trouble at home are twofold. The first, most obviously, is that a prime minister can be seen as failing to address domestic matters, too busy showboating abroad. In March, as Mr Brown’s aircraft was on the runway in Strasbourg to fly to New York, the news broke that Mervyn King, the Governor of the Bank of England, had declared that Britain’s finances were so bad the country could not afford another fiscal stimulus, a key element of the Prime Minister’s upcoming talks.

At home, William Hague, the Shadow Foreign Secretary, blasted in the Commons: “The Prime Minister is on his way to Chile. The Business Secretary [Lord Mandelson] has just arrived in Brazil. Shouldn’t he be implementing these schemes instead of unpacking his Speedos on a Latin American beach?”

The other big risk is that a prime minister may find that the situation at home becomes so difficult, he publicly loses status on the world stage. In both Chile in March and in Poland last week, Mr Brown had to listen to leaders of those countries crow about how they had handled their own economies so much better than he had. In Pakistan, while President Zardari met Mr Brown privately to discuss aid and the war against terror, it was the Pakistani Prime Minister who attended the press conference, a move, interpreted by some as a snub over student visas.

Even Mr Brown’s latest trip to see the troops in Afghanistan backfired. He was an hour late and the troops stood waiting in the baking sun. Many could not hear because of microphone problems — and some of them were Estonian and a bit unsure about who Mr Brown actually was.

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