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Three men are dead in White City. A train driver is dead near Bedford, with nine souls still clinging to life in hospital. This Author does not reach for her lorgnette on a Sunday such as this one – she sets it down entirely, and she asks the Gentle Reader to pause with her for a moment before the satirical pen is lifted at all.
The blaze on New Zealand Way in White City consumed a single-storey pavilion late on Saturday evening, killing three men despite the efforts of some one hundred firefighters and fifteen engines. The Metropolitan Constabulary and the Capital’s Fire Brigade are now conducting a joint investigation. Three men went into that building and did not come out. One hopes justice, and answers, follow swiftly.
Nor was Friday’s disaster any less grievous. Two East Midlands Rail Carriage Company services collided just south of Elstow near Bedford at a quarter past five in the evening, killing the driver and injuring a hundred passengers. Twenty-eight remain in hospital as This Author writes, nine of them in a critical condition. Services to and from St Pancras Grand Terminus have been suspended throughout the weekend. The British Transport Constabulary has asked, with commendable firmness, that nobody speculate as to the cause. This Author obliges – and trusts the investigators entirely.
From Edinburgh comes news of a most alarming nature. A 36-year-old man – bare-chested, wielding what the footage suggests was a large weapon, and apparently impervious to the social conventions that ordinarily discourage one from vandalising petrol stations in the street – has been charged in connection with a series of suspected anti-Muslim attacks that left five men injured on Friday evening. The attacks began near a mosque in the west of the city, with further incidents on Leith Walk several miles away. Lord Starmer condemned the attacks; First Minister Swinney declared there was “no place for violence, racism or intolerance” in North Britain. Both statements are, one trusts, rather more than decorative. The charged man shall appear in court in due course.
And so to the matter of Lord Starmer himself, who is, according to the Prime Minister’s Residence, “getting on with the job” – a phrase that, the more one hears it, begins to resemble the declaration of a man who has locked himself in the library and is refusing to come out for supper. Lord Burnham won Thursday’s Makerfield by-election and is now the name on every ambitious lip in the Progressive Assembly. A former cabinet secretary of singular distinction, the newly ennobled Lord Case – who advised no fewer than four prime ministers in dizzying succession – has weighed in to note that leadership uncertainty is “enormously disruptive” and, more practically, “costs us money” by driving up borrowing costs. Lord Burnham’s allies urge Lord Starmer to reflect. Lord Streeting’s allies are, for now, silently reflecting alongside him. The whole of the corridors of power is, in short, in a condition of very expensive reflection.
On a note that is, refreshingly, rather more cheerful: Jeremy Clarkson has announced he is in remission from prostate cancer. He was diagnosed in 2025 with an aggressive form of the disease, had a portion of his prostate removed, and has now been told by his physicians that no trace of cancer remains. “I am without a doubt, officially, the world’s luckiest man,” he told the Sunday Times – which is, for a man who has previously driven a car through a wall at speed and declared it marvellous, rather a high bar of fortune to have cleared. He is now using his considerable platform to urge every gentleman within earshot to get tested, noting that twelve thousand men die each year in this Kingdom from prostate cancer. This Author, who finds Jeremy Clarkson only intermittently tolerable, finds him on this occasion entirely correct. Go and get tested. He is not dead, and he would very much like you to follow his example.
Finally, a dispatch from the Palace that will delight those who enjoy both transparency and mild constitutional novelty: His Majesty the King is to become the first British monarch in modern times to publish his personal tax bill. On Thursday, the annual royal financial accounts will, for the first time, include the total sums paid in income tax and capital gains tax on the King’s private income – including profits from the Duchy of Lancaster, which generated some £24 million last year. The Palace describes this as part of a “modernising drive” for greater transparency, and one understands the initiative follows, with delicate understatement, the various scandals surrounding Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. Monarchs are not obliged to pay income tax. That His Majesty does so voluntarily, and now publicly, is the sort of gesture that makes one almost feel affectionate towards the institution of royalty on a dark Sunday. Almost.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.