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Dearest Gentle Reader,
“We’ll forget her soon enough.” Four words. This Author has turned them over like a coin all morning, examining both sides, and finds she cannot quite put them down.
Earl Spencer has granted the Broadcasting Society an audience at his Northamptonshire estate, and with the particular calm of a man who has been sitting on a very hot truth for nearly thirty years, he repeats his claim: that His Majesty the King, in the days after Princess Diana’s death, spoke those very words during a disagreement over whether the young princes should walk in their mother’s funeral procession. The Palace has responded with a statement of magnificent indirection, suggesting that “fraternal grief can cloud reason, affect judgement and colour memory” – a formulation so artfully noncommittal that it deserves its own chapter in a diplomacy textbook. Earl Spencer, for his part, is unimpressed: “Is he furious? Is he furious or is he embarrassed?” Reader, this Author cannot answer that question, but she notes that The Palace declined to respond to his fresh remarks. Silence, as we know, is its own sort of answer.
From one variety of confidence crisis to another. Sir Jim Ratcliffe – billionaire, petrochemical magnate, and proud minority owner of a certain struggling northern football institution – has announced, with the gravitas of a man delivering a verdict, that he has lost confidence in the Kingdom. The country, he declares, is “on the slide.” One might observe that Sir Jim himself has been sliding – quite deliberately – in the direction of Monaco since 2020, a tax residency that lends his patriotic lament a certain rich irony. He warns that the Kingdom could “run out of gas” this winter if temperatures drop, which is the sort of observation one might expect to carry more weight if the observer had not decamped to the Mediterranean. The government, unmoved, assures us of a “diverse energy mix.” Sir Jim counters that America applauds wealth creators, while Britain merely eyes them with jealousy. This Author would gently suggest that applause is easier to come by when one is, in fact, present.
Meanwhile, the government turns its reforming eye upon the parents of the Southern Kingdom‘s young miscreants. A Youth Justice Minister – one whose name this Author declines to enshrine, he being insufficiently scandalous to deserve the honour – has told The Times that mothers and fathers may face loss of benefits, or even imprisonment, for the crimes of their offspring. It is, he assures us, a “carrot-and-stick” approach, though critics note the carrots are not immediately visible. Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy, who championed the policy in its earlier form, spoke warmly of “real consequences” for parents who wilfully fail to engage. One sympathises with the impulse; one merely wonders whether gaoling a parent is the most reliable method of stabilising a child. The judges, at least, will have the final word – which is perhaps the most sensible arrangement in a scheme that has more moving parts than a Swiss clock.
This Author must pause for a moment upon the village of Brantham in Suffolk, and upon three-year-old Noah Woods, whose body was recovered from a pond this week after he became separated from a relative at a playground. More than 1,300 people joined the search; the community gathered first in hope and then in grief, as communities do when there is nothing else to be done. This Author will not reach for wit here. Some things require only acknowledgement, and the quiet wish that such a village, which has known more than its share of sorrow, might in time find some peace.
And for those in need of lighter relief, the Meteorological Office extends an olive branch: temperatures may reach 26 degrees Celsius next week, as late summer remembers its manners and returns, briefly, to warm the Southern Kingdom. North Britain and the Northern Province are advised to enjoy it whilst it lasts, for their spell of warmth may prove short indeed. Saturday itself offers the customary British compromise of sunshine and passing showers – which is to say, the precise conditions under which this nation functions best: mildly damp, faintly hopeful, and prepared for anything. This Author raises her teacup to the week ahead, and trusts the warmth will outlast the scandals. Though, knowing the Kingdom as she does, she would not wager upon it.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.