Dearest Gentle Reader,
This Author had scarcely set down her morning tea when no fewer than five dispatches arrived at once, each more breathless than the last. One begins to suspect the footmen are racing one another. With the month now well advanced, one might have hoped March would go quietly – but no. The affairs of this Kingdom grow more tangled by the hour, and This Author’s ink pot runneth over.
To the matter that shall cause the greatest distress at every breakfast table in the land: the cost of borrowing against one’s home has surged with a ferocity that would make a highwayman blush. A typical mortgage is now some seven hundred and eighty-eight pounds per annum dearer than it was a mere fortnight ago, with average two-year fixed rates climbing to 5.28 per cent. The cause? The unpleasantness in Persia, naturally, and the spectre of what the financially literate are calling “Trumpflation” – a word This Author finds both ugly and entirely apt. Nearly seven hundred mortgage products have vanished from the market like wallflowers after the third dance. Borrowers are advised to plan ahead, though This Author suspects that advice arrives rather like an umbrella offered after the downpour.
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Meanwhile, Lady Reeves has unveiled a rather dazzling sum – two and a half billion pounds – to be lavished upon quantum computing and artificial intelligence, lest the Kingdom’s cleverest minds continue their tiresome habit of drifting across the Atlantic to make their fortunes. Speaking from the National Quantum Computing Centre in Oxfordshire, Lady Reeves proclaimed the virtues of a “strategic and active state,” which This Author translates loosely as: we shall finally pay attention before someone else steals our best people. The Conservatives, never ones to let a rival’s announcement pass unbruised, accused the government of wishing to “row back on Brexit.” This Author merely observes that if one’s brightest subjects keep fleeing to the American Colonies, perhaps the fault lies not in the stars but in the funding.
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In news that shall delight every long-suffering railway traveller – and that, Dear Reader, is all of us – the Delay Repay scheme is to be reformed so that one may claim compensation from whichever merchant sold one the ticket, rather than navigating a labyrinth of train operators each pointing accusingly at the other. Additionally, railcard holders shall face a new “verification step” to prevent innocent souls from being prosecuted for fare evasion when they have merely been confused by the Byzantine rules. This Author applauds any scheme that reduces the persecution of bewildered passengers, though she notes with some amusement that it has taken an entire government apparatus to invent what is essentially a receipt check.
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Across the border in North Britain, the Scottish Assembly faces its most solemn vote in the history of devolution: whether to become the first nation in the Kingdom to permit assisted dying for the terminally ill. The bill, described by its author as “bulletproof,” has survived one hundred and seventy-five amendments and passions on both sides run deep. This Author shall not make light of matters so grave, but will note that whatever the outcome, the courage required of legislators voting their conscience on life and death far exceeds anything demanded at the average parliamentary division.
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Lord Trump has declared himself “not happy” with the Kingdom, which he once called the “Rolls-Royce of allies” – a compliment that now appears to have been repossessed. His displeasure centres on Lord Starmer‘s reluctance to dispatch warships to the Strait of Hormuz with sufficient enthusiasm. Lord Trump admitted he was testing allied leaders “not because we need them but because I want to find out how they’re reacting” – which is to say, the entire affair is less military strategy than a particularly aggressive personality quiz. Lord Starmer, for his part, insists the Kingdom shall not be drawn into a “wider war,” though one suspects the definition of “wider” is under constant renegotiation.
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I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.