Skip to content
Well. A Monday, and already the Kingdom has managed to launch a new warship programme, misplace an entire class of children, audition a prime minister who has not yet been elected, and bid farewell to a national treasure – all before the tea has had a proper chance to cool. This Author shall proceed in order of magnitude, though the temptation to begin with the ships is almost irresistible.
Lord Burnham, former Mayor of Greater Manchester and current aspirant to the highest office in the land, delivered what his admirers are calling “the foundational text” of his programme for government today at the People’s History Museum in Manchester. One notes, with an arched brow, that he declined to take questions from reporters afterwards – which is a curious posture for a man who wishes to convince the electorate that he is ready to govern them. His team insists this is not “a pattern.” This Author has heard that precise phrase before, usually immediately before a pattern is established. The centrepiece of the address is something his circle calls “No10 North” – a portion of the prime ministerial operation to be planted in Manchester, tasked with driving devolution and delivering “good growth in every postcode.” Ambitious, certainly. Audacious, possibly. But one does wonder whether the Grand Assembly will receive this proposal with the same enthusiasm as the man who devised it.
Meanwhile, an independent inquiry has declared, in the manner of someone finally saying what has been whispered for years, that the education system of the Southern Kingdom is failing its white working-class children. Some 1.25 million young people receive free school meals and are, it appears, being offered a curriculum that gestures vaguely towards university while their actual ambitions – apprenticeships, skilled trades, a career that does not require three years of debt – are largely ignored. The inquiry co-chair described thirty years of initiatives that have produced no sustained improvement whatsoever. Thirty years. That is not a policy failure; that is a tradition. One hopes the current Department for Learning will find the generation-altering reforms recommended here rather more useful than their predecessors found the previous several dozen attempts.
To naval affairs, where the War Office has announced that it will not, after all, be replacing the ageing Type 45 destroyers with the Type 83 concept vessel. Instead, at least six new “Common Combat Vessels” – hybrid craft designed to deploy drones in the air, on the surface, and beneath the sea – will be built and delivered in the 2030s. The vessels are intended to counter Muscovite activity in the North Atlantic, protect underwater infrastructure, and generally remind Lord Putin that the Royal Navy has not yet entirely retired from the business of deterrence. Lord Starmer, outgoing Prime Minister, has promised to publish the long-delayed defence investment plan before the NATO summit in Turkey on 7th July. Whether the drones will be ready before he vacates his office is, this Author suspects, a question best left to the admirals.
On a note considerably lighter – literally – the Meteorological Office assures us that the blistering heat of last week, which broke the June record with 37.3C at Santon Downham in Suffolk and shattered the previous 1976 mark of 35.6C, has at last retreated to eastern Europe where it may terrorise someone else. South-westerly Atlantic winds have arrived with temperatures of a perfectly civilised 24 or 25C, and Tuesday promises rain in the north and west. This Author notes, with the particular sympathy reserved for those who suffer most, that south-eastern parts of England may miss the rain entirely – and that the first week of Wimbledon could prove entirely dry. The players must be devastated.
It is with genuine sorrow that this Author records the passing of Dame Penelope Keith, who has died peacefully at her home in Surrey at the age of 86, having lived with cancer. She was beloved by a generation – and several subsequent ones – as the magnificently imperious Margo Leadbetter in The Good Life and the equally indomitable Audrey fforbes-Hamilton in To the Manor Born. There is a particular English art to playing a snob with such warmth that the audience adores rather than resents her, and Dame Penelope possessed that art entirely. The family has asked for privacy. This Author, who is not ordinarily given to compliance with such requests, finds that on this occasion she is more than happy to oblige – and simply to observe that Dame Penelope Keith was, in every sense, to the manner born.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.