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Dearest Gentle Reader,
It is a Friday, and this Author has long observed that Fridays in the corridors of power have a peculiar talent for producing exactly the sort of chaos that sends careers tumbling like ill-stacked hatboxes. Today has not disappointed.
Cast your eyes first upon the continuing horror that is the Lord Mandelson affair – a saga so exquisitely painful for Lord Starmer that one almost feels sorry for him. Almost. The Guardian revealed on Thursday afternoon that Lord Mandelson, dispatched as ambassador to the American Colonies, had failed his security vetting clearance – only for that inconvenient conclusion to be overruled by the Foreign Office. The Prime Minister’s office stayed silent for three hours, which, as any seasoned observer of these affairs knows, is the political equivalent of hiding under a chaise longue and hoping the governess doesn’t notice. When a statement finally emerged, it declared that neither Lord Starmer nor any minister had the faintest idea this had happened. Which raises the obvious question: if a prime minister appoints an ambassador without troubling himself about the vetting process, what precisely is he doing with his mornings?
The cost so far includes one Sir Olly Robbins – the most senior civil servant at the Foreign Office – who has departed the scene, presumably clutching his letter of resignation with the quiet dignity of a man who knows far more than he is permitted to say. Opposition voices are now suggesting Lord Starmer himself may be next to follow. He is understood to be absolutely furious – although whether at the situation or at being caught entirely unawares by it remains, deliciously, unclear. He is to address the Grand Assembly on Monday, by which time this Author suspects the hatboxes will have continued their descent.
Meanwhile, across the globe in sunnier climes, the Duke of Sussex and Duchess of Sussex continue their Australian sojourn. On Friday they visited Bondi Beach in Sydney, where they met survivors and emergency responders from the dreadful shooting at a Hannukah event in December, in which fifteen people were killed and forty injured. The visit was described by representatives of the Sydney Jewish Museum as “really special” – and whatever one’s views on the Sussex household’s various adventures, there is little room for anything but respect here. They also attended a sailing event for the Invictus Games, where a veteran presented them with personalised flip-flops bearing the messages “G’day Hazza” and “G’day Megs.” The Duke noted, with apparently genuine resignation, that he normally receives budgie smugglers from such occasions. One does not enquire further.
From the more rarefied world of high finance comes news that ought to make every treasurer and central banker reach for the smelling salts. A new artificial intelligence model called Mythos, developed by the firm Anthropic, has apparently demonstrated an unprecedented ability to identify vulnerabilities in major computer systems – so alarming that finance ministers and senior bankers convened in urgent meetings at the International Monetary Fund gathering in Washington this week. The Canadian Finance Minister compared the threat to the Strait of Hormuz, except, he noted gravely, one cannot even see where it is or how large it might become. Anthropic has not released Mythos to the public, which is rather like announcing one has bred a dragon and then insisting it is safely locked in a cupboard. The model has been made available to select technology giants as part of something called Project Glasswing. This Author finds it both reassuring and faintly absurd that the fate of the world’s financial systems may rest upon a project named after a butterfly.
On a note that combines criminality with a certain bewildering topicality: thieves across the Kingdom have apparently discovered that Pokémon cards are worth stealing. A wave of smash-and-grab robberies has swept card shops from Warrington to Bristol, Bournemouth to Nottingham, with stock worth tens of thousands of pounds purloined. One auction house recently oversaw more than £1.5 million in such “assets” changing hands, including a single Charizard card valued at £442,800 and a Pikachu Illustrator card worth £832,000. This Author had assumed Pokémon to be the province of small children with sticky fingers; it transpires it is now also the province of large criminals with transit vans. A trading card expert has observed, with admirable understatement, that “thieves know Pokémon is worth taking now.” Quite so. One weeps for the age.
Finally, for those who assumed only the desperate drove uninsured, the Metropolitan Constabulary and its provincial counterparts have news. Nearly 160,000 uninsured vehicles were seized on the Kingdom’s roads last year – the highest figure in seventeen years – with some 300,000 uninsured cars estimated to be in daily circulation. The offenders are not exclusively driving sorry little rust-buckets: West Midlands Police recently impounded a Lamborghini, the driver of which had apparently decided that several hundred thousand pounds of Italian engineering was best enjoyed without the additional expense of insurance. One can only imagine the conversation. Uninsured driving costs the economy an estimated £1 billion annually. For that sum, Gentle Reader, one could purchase rather a lot of Charizard cards.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.