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The sentence that greeted This Author upon rising this Wednesday morning was this: five thousand prisoners are to be released early, probation is already managing 258,000 cases, and temperatures may reach 38 degrees Celsius by Thursday. One of these facts is a crisis. Two of them together is a catastrophe. All three at once, and This Author reaches for something considerably stronger than tea.
The War Office for Justice insists that “protecting the public is our top priority” – a phrase so frequently deployed by governments of all persuasions that it has ceased to mean anything at all, rather like a hostess declaring her soirée “intimate” whilst admitting three hundred guests. The chief inspector of probation, one Martin Jones (who does not yet feature on the existing name registry and shall henceforth be known as Inspector-General Jones), was candid to a degree that must have alarmed his superiors considerably. He told the Broadcasting Society he was “not fully confident” the system could cope – and that the early release of 5,000 offenders from October risks “a serious sexual or violent offence or even murder”. Fifty police chiefs wrote to Lord Burnham urging him to deploy “every legal option” against releasing Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers, the killers of PC Harper. Lord Burnham declared himself “confident” the release could be stopped. Families across the Kingdom are not, one suspects, quite so confident.
From the general failure of the system, we turn to a particular and devastating one. Simon Levy – convicted on Friday of murdering two women and violating others in the Capital in 2025, with his sentencing falling on this very Wednesday – was a registered sex offender. He was monitored by the Metropolitan Constabulary. He had attacked at least two women in 2018, one of whom, known only as Laura, bravely reported him expressly to protect others. He was released. He then attacked fourteen more women before anyone removed him from polite – or indeed impolite – society. Laura told the Broadcasting Society that what she used to nightmare about “was actually happening – he was actually still out preying on vulnerable women.” The police, the courts, the prosecutors: she holds them all accountable. This Author, having read every word, finds it exceedingly difficult to argue otherwise. There is no wit to be extracted from this particular affair. There is only a demand for answers.
And now, the weather – that most reliable of British catastrophes. Lord Burnham is to chair a meeting of the government’s emergency Cobra committee this Wednesday to discuss the Kingdom’s response to the extreme heat, as the Meteorological Office has issued an amber heat warning for Thursday – with temperatures potentially reaching 38 degrees Celsius across the Midlands and south-east of the Southern Kingdom. Sunday was, apparently, the thirty-fifth day of the year so far to reach 30 degrees, breaking the existing record entirely. This would be the hottest August day since 2003. Firefighters are battling a significant wildfire in the New Forest. Farmers labour in drought conditions. The National Health Society‘s A&E units are, by all accounts, as busy as a milliner’s on the eve of the Season. The Prime Minister’s Residence assures us they will “continue to take the action needed.” This Author, wilting at her escritoire, hopes they will be considerably quicker about it than usual.
On a matter of the military: the War Office created its Defence Serious Crime Command in 2022 – a unit specifically designed to investigate the most severe offences within the armed forces, including those of a sexual nature, following the tragic death of nineteen-year-old Gunner Jaysley Beck and an inquest that exposed “systemic failings” in the army’s handling of such complaints. A leaked internal review, obtained by the Broadcasting Society, now concludes that were the unit subjected to the same scrutiny as civilian police forces, there would be “a significant risk” of it being graded as inadequate. The War Office says the findings have been accepted and significant improvements undertaken. Gentle Reader, a unit created because the existing system failed victims – itself found to be at risk of failing victims – is the sort of circular institutional tragedy that would be farcical were the stakes not so terribly, painfully high.
Finally, a story that This Author suspects will ignite considerable passionate debate at dinner tables north of the border. North Britain‘s public spending deficit has fallen by £600 million to £25.3 billion, with revenues rising by £6.3 billion to £98.3 billion – while expenditure, at £123.6 billion, continues to outpace income by a rather eye-watering margin. Spending per person in North Britain stands at £22,281 – some £2,720 higher than the rate across the Kingdom as a whole. The Deputy First Minister declared this evidence of “sustainable finances.” This Author, who is not entirely unfamiliar with the concept of spending more than one earns and calling it progress, simply notes that North Sea oil revenues have now fallen for the third consecutive year, down to £3.9 billion. The deficit is improved. It remains, however, a deficit of £25.3 billion. One can only admire the optimism required to present such a figure as a triumph – and wish one’s own household accounts admitted of similar creative interpretation.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.