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Dearest Gentle Reader,
It being a Sunday, one might reasonably expect the affairs of the Kingdom to pause for a moment of quiet reflection. One would, of course, be entirely wrong. From Persia to the corridors of power, from a Surrey suburb to the skies above Gloucestershire, this particular Sunday has arrived fully armed and considerably irritable. This Author takes up her pen accordingly.
We begin with the matter of those wretched energy bills, which are, it seems, to be wretched for considerably longer than anyone had hoped. A senior minister – one Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister – has informed the nation with admirable candour that the economic consequences of Lord Trump‘s military adventures in the Middle East may linger for eight months or more after hostilities conclude. Higher energy prices, dearer food, costlier flight tickets – a trinity of misery to accompany whatever summer we are still permitted to enjoy. Lord Starmer is to convene yet another Cabinet committee on Tuesday, ministers are meeting twice weekly to monitor supply chains, and drivers are being urged, with all the dignity the government can muster, to simply carry on filling up their motorcars and not to panic. This Author notes that being told not to panic is historically the surest possible signal that panic is entirely warranted.
From matters of war, we turn to matters of imagination – specifically, to a crime that never occurred yet somehow managed to incite very real disorder in the otherwise unremarkable Surrey suburb of Epsom. You will recall the reports: an alleged gang rape outside a church, whispers that asylum seekers were responsible, protesters storming a hotel, vandalism, arrests. A frenzy worthy of the most lurid penny pamphlet. And now the Surrey Constabulary has delivered its conclusion: the assault did not take place. The woman in question, it transpires, sustained an accidental head injury following a night out and made, in the force’s careful phrasing, “a confused report.” The online misinformation that preceded the disorder had, by that point, already done its work. One is left to marvel at the extraordinary efficiency with which falsehood travels, and the rather less impressive efficiency with which truth follows behind it, panting and considerably out of breath.
Meanwhile, at the Prime Minister’s Residence, Lord Starmer has taken to the pages of the Sunday Times to assure all and sundry that the “vast majority” of his Parliamentary colleagues adore him and wish him to continue. One is reminded of the guest at a dinner party who announces, unprompted, that everyone is having a splendid time. The Conservative shadow home secretary, for his part, has called upon Labour MPs to “develop a backbone” and remove their leader – a request so extraordinary in its candour that even this Author, who has seen much, paused to refill her cup. The whole affair traces back, of course, to the appointment of Lord Mandelson as ambassador to the American Colonies, a decision security officials had recommended against – intelligence which, Lord Starmer insists, was never passed on to him. The corridors of power, gentle reader, are apparently equipped with very poor acoustics.
A rather more alarming dispatch arrives from the Northern Province, where a car bomb exploded outside Dunmurry police station in the early hours of Saturday – the second such attack at a police station in recent weeks. The chair of the Northern Ireland Policing Board described the device as intended “to kill officers and cause maximum harm” in the heart of a residential area. By what one can only term a miracle, no one was seriously injured. The First Minister condemned those responsible in terms both clear and correct: they have, she said, nothing to offer society. This Author concurs entirely, and finds no comedy whatsoever to apply here – only profound relief that the miracle held.
On a note considerably lighter – and, one confesses, irresistible – Queen Camilla is to travel to New York on the royal state visit bearing a stuffed toy kangaroo. Specifically, a replica of Roo, the small kangaroo companion who has been missing from the original Winnie-the-Pooh collection at the New York Public Library since the 1930s. The original toys – Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet, Kanga, and Tigger – have resided in the library since 1987, but Roo was lost long ago. Her Majesty, deploying what royal sources are cheerfully calling “royal soft toy power,” will complete the set. His Majesty the King meanwhile addresses Congress in pursuit of the Special Relationship. One cannot say which mission appears the more diplomatically complex, though this Author suspects the kangaroo will generate rather more goodwill than the speech.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.