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Gentle Reader, seven. Seven prime ministers since the year 2016. This Author has had fewer cups of tea this morning – and she has had rather a lot. Lord Starmer stepped out of the Prime Minister’s Residence on this Monday morning, his voice cracking with the particular emotion of a man who has simultaneously lost the biggest job in the country and rediscovered his wife and children. One must admire the theatrical efficiency of it.
His departure, announced with considerable feeling, sets in motion a leadership contest within the Progressive Assembly, with nominations opening on the 9th of July and closing by the summer recess on the 16th. A new leader, we are promised, before the Grand Assembly returns in September – at which point Lord Starmer shall retire to the role of devoted husband to Vic, who has been described, in his own words, as “a rock.” This Author notes that rocks are famously immovable and says nothing further on the matter. He became prime minister on the 5th of July 2024, elected leader of the Progressive Assembly in April 2020, and leaves behind, he insists, a Britain stronger and fairer than the one he inherited. The ton shall debate that particular claim at some length, no doubt.
While the great and the good debated the fate of the nation, far more quietly heroic business was unfolding near Bedford, where a train driver lost his life on Friday when two East Midlands Rail Carriage Company services to St Pancras Grand Terminus collided at approximately quarter past five in the afternoon. Approximately one hundred souls were injured. One passenger, Mareks Grabovskis, described moving at the last second from the first carriage to the last – a decision that may well have saved his life. He awoke upon the floor to scenes of considerable horror and speaks of it with the quiet gratitude of a man who understands he was fortunate.
Amid all this, a ticket inspector – injured himself – stayed at his post, radioing for the lines to be closed and checking on his fellow passengers. This Author finds that sort of quiet courage infinitely more impressive than any resignation speech. The line between Bedford and Luton is expected to remain closed until the 28th of June, with some 600 metres of track requiring replacement. Those relying on that corridor for their Monday morning commute will wish to make alternative arrangements – perhaps a very long walk and a stiff drink at either end.
To darker nursery corridors now. The Broadcasting Society has been investigating the case of Nathan Newby – a childcare worker sentenced to thirty years in February for the sexual abuse of five boys aged two and three at Partou King Street Nursery in Bristol. A former colleague, one Bessie Martin, told management long before his arrest that Newby held children for too long and sat them on his lap out of view of the CCTV cameras. Her concerns were dismissed. She was told she was imagining it. This Author wishes she had been. The nursery chain, Partou, operates more than one hundred sites across the Southern Kingdom. In response to all of this, the Department for Learning has announced three thousand additional unannounced nursery inspections per year from the autumn – triple the previous figure. Children deserve every one of them.
And now, Gentle Reader, for the story that has caused This Author to put down her teacup and stare at the ceiling in something between admiration and despair. The Former First Lady of North Britain is to appear in a new four-part television programme called The Wargame, in which she plays deputy prime minister of a fictional government at war with Muscovy. Her prime minister, in this elaborate fantasy, is none other than ex-Conservative minister Michael Gove. The cross-party cabinet will hold emergency meetings of the COBRA variety. The drama, apparently, could not be more timely.
This Author notes that the announcement comes as the Former First Lady of North Britain’s estranged husband, Mr Murrell – former chief executive of the Caledonian Independence Society for more than twenty years – awaits sentencing on Tuesday, having pleaded guilty to embezzling over £400,000 of party funds to purchase cars, a motorhome, and cosmetics. Lord Lumsden, the newly elected Aberdeen South MP, has suggested that a woman who failed to notice a giant motorhome parked nearby might struggle in a crisis simulation. This Author could not possibly comment. She merely observes that fiction, on this occasion, is considerably less extraordinary than fact.
Finally, a brief word on a matter of commercial embarrassment. A discount website by the name of Wowcher sent a marketing email on Saturday – while a three-year-old boy lay in critical but stable condition at Addenbrooke’s Hospital following a crocodile attack at a zoo near Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire on Thursday – bearing the subject line: “Snap up these deals quicker than a croc can catch a kid!” Screenshots spread across the digital salons with the speed one might expect. Wowcher has since apologised, described the wording as “unacceptable,” and confirmed that it was never approved for use. This Author is not entirely certain which is more alarming: that someone wrote it, or that the approval process failed to catch it. The little boy, at least, is said to be stable. One prays fervently he continues to improve, and that whoever composed that subject line has been reassigned to something altogether less creative.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.