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Dearest Gentle Reader,
This Author has a question – purely rhetorical, one understands – for the respectable shopkeeper of the Southern Kingdom: when a gentleman behind a counter offers to supply one with “weed, coke, everything,” is that simply what passes for customer service these days? The Broadcasting Society has conducted a year-long undercover investigation into mini-marts across the West Midlands, and the findings are, to put it with breathtaking delicacy, alarming. Cocaine, cannabis, laughing gas, and prescription pills were offered to researchers with a cheerfulness that most legitimate retailers reserve for loyalty card schemes. At a establishment in Cradley Heath, it took mere seconds for one Akwa behind the counter to furnish a researcher with 3.5 grams of cannabis for thirty pounds – rather competitive pricing, This Author is told, though she would not personally know.
The relevant authorities confirm that criminal gangs have systematically infiltrated shopfronts from Devon to Norfolk to the Northern Province, with drugs including crystal meth and heroin found in more than seventy shops. Lord Byrne, chair of the Committee of Commerce, has declared that High Streets cannot be restored while “the cancer of organised crime” persists. This Author applauds the sentiment, whilst noting that the cancer appears to have set up quite a comfortable retail operation in the meantime.
Meanwhile, Lady Mahmood has on this very Thursday signed a three-year agreement with France valued at £662 million – a sum that has caused considerable spluttering in certain quarters – to address the small boats crossing the Channel. The deal promises riot-trained officers on French beaches, drones, two helicopters, and a camera system to intercept people smugglers. More intriguingly, some £100 million of that sum may be withheld if the French do not stop sufficient crossings, though the government has declined to specify what “sufficient” actually means. A performance target with no stated target. This Author admires the audacity.
Reform Society has condemned the arrangement as paying more money “for a system that has already failed,” whilst the Conservatives accuse the government of handing over “half a billion pounds with no conditions at all.” One notes that 41,472 people arrived by small boat in 2025 alone, and more than 6,000 have already made the crossing so far in 2026. Whether £662 million represents bold diplomacy or expensive optimism is, perhaps, a question best left to Thursday’s historians.
On the enduring matter of Lord Mandelson’s security vetting – a saga that continues to unfurl with the unhurried majesty of a particularly damp novel – the Prime Minister’s Residence faces yet more scrutiny. The former prime minister’s chief of staff, one Morgan McSweeney, is to give evidence to the Foreign Affairs Committee regarding his role in expediting the vetting of Lord Mandelson as ambassador to the American Colonies. Former senior civil servant Sir Olly Robbins has already testified that the Prime Minister’s Residence displayed a “dismissive” attitude towards proper process – a charge denied with the weary predictability of a government that has been denying things for some months now. Lord Mandelson was ultimately dismissed seven months into his posting, owing to his past friendship with the convicted Lord Epstein. The entire episode suggests that “borderline” security vetting, much like “borderline” soufflés, rarely ends happily.
From one sort of chemical contamination to another: a group of Members of the Grand Assembly has called for a ban on so-called “forever chemicals” – PFAS – found in everything from school uniforms to non-stick frying pans. These are substances that resist oil, water, heat, and, crucially, the passage of time itself; once in the environment, they do not break down. Nor, it appears, do they break down inside human bodies. Nearly all of us, the committee advises, carry some quantity of PFAS within us – a revelation that sits somewhere between “mildly alarming” and “genuinely horrifying” depending on one’s constitution. The government says it will “consider” the recommendations. The chemicals, presumably, will continue accumulating while it does so.
And finally, a word from the former prime minister Rishi Sunak, who has emerged from his post-government chrysalis as an adviser to an artificial intelligence firm, and wishes the world to know that AI is already reducing employment opportunities for young people. Company bosses, he confides, are telling him that “flat is the new up” – meaning they expect to grow their businesses without hiring more staff. He proposes abolishing National Insurance and replacing it with taxes on corporate profits. This Author notes, with one perfectly arched eyebrow, that a man now employed by the very industry displacing young workers has chosen this moment to express concern for young workers. The audacity is, at minimum, intellectually consistent.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.