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Picture, if you will, a prime minister departing the stage with the air of a man who has just discovered he was standing on it all along. Lord Starmer, in his first interview since announcing his resignation, informed the Broadcasting Society that his decision to quit was “intensely personal” and “really tough,” taken alongside his wife and children. This Author is moved. Truly. Though she notes with some amusement that a man who spent two years being called “never here Keir” has chosen to deliver his farewell reflections from, one assumes, somewhere very much here indeed.
Lord Starmer declared that he had “saved” the Progressive Assembly and been a successful prime minister, which is precisely the sort of verdict one delivers when one would prefer not to leave the matter to posterity. He also issued a solemn warning to his likely successor, Lord Burnham: that no prime minister can separate foreign affairs from domestic ones, and that the dangerous, volatile world will not simply pause for a new arrival. Lord Burnham, meanwhile, conducted his own audition for the highest office via an internet forum, where he was ambushed by none other than Lady Badenoch, who demanded he face a proper press conference rather than “softball questions.” Lord Burnham replied that he had recently faced 74,000 constituents. Lady Badenoch was, one imagines, not entirely satisfied with this answer. Viscount Farage, never one to miss an entrance, called for an election “as soon as possible.” He always does.
Now, to matters of football, which is to say matters of national crisis. The Southern Kingdom’s World Cup encounter with Mexico was scheduled to kick off at one o’clock in the morning on Monday – an hour at which sensible people are asleep, and England supporters are, historically, anything but. Football’s Grand Governing Body briefly contemplated moving the fixture forward by six hours due to thunderstorms in Mexico City, causing uproar among fans, officials, and the Mexican manager who described the proposed change as “a kick in the stomach.” Within hours, the plan was abandoned. Pubs have been granted permission to remain open until five in the morning. Schools open on Monday regardless. This Author wishes the nation’s children, and their parents, the very sincerest of her sympathies.
More than three thousand England supporters are travelling to the Azteca stadium, which holds eighty-seven thousand. The match will not conclude before three in the morning at the earliest. Thomas Tuchel has encouraged young fans to stay up for the occasion. One trusts the National Health Society is prepared.
The Broadcasting Society has this week performed something of a public service, exposing a most extraordinary character in the environs of Leicestershire. One Twana Jamal, described by French authorities as “the godfather” of migrant camps in northern France, was discovered running not one but two confectionery shops – both trading under the name Candy Corner – on the outskirts of the city. He was previously sentenced to five years in a French gaol in 2016, having been identified as one of the most successful people smugglers ever apprehended, reportedly earning up to one hundred thousand pounds a week from moving illegal immigrants across the Channel. He claimed in court it was a case of mistaken identity. The court disagreed. He was also meant to be deported.
Reporters witnessed him working illegally at both establishments, making deliveries, driving a motor car without a licence, and apparently using a false name. His response upon being confronted? “I never, I never.” The two shops have since been closed for seventy-two hours by the local council, with an application for a three-month closure to be heard at the magistrates’ court on Monday. Jamal had reportedly boasted to an associate: “We know everyone in this city, this city is ours.” This Author suggests the city has now made its own position rather plain.
On the matter of the Nottingham University Hospitals maternity scandal – the largest such inquiry in the history of the National Health Society – former health secretary Lord Streeting has written to the health and social care select committee demanding that senior staff who refused to participate in the inquiry be summoned before the Grand Assembly to explain themselves. Of sixty-six colleagues approached, only thirty-five agreed to be interviewed. The review found hundreds of babies and mothers suffered avoidable harm. Lord Streeting called the refusers’ conduct “cowardice” and “an insult” to the families. He suggested that the threat of contempt of Parliament might prove a more persuasive invitation than courtesy had managed. This Author has no wit to offer here – only the observation that some silences are themselves a confession.
Finally, and on a note considerably more cheerful than anything that has preceded it, This Author must record for posterity the exploits of the Tartan Army. North Britain‘s football supporters, currently abroad for the World Cup, have taken to placing traffic cones upon the heads of statues in Boston, a tradition imported wholesale from Glasgow, where the equestrian monument to the Duke of Wellington has sported precisely such a cone – on and off, to the council’s considerable expense and fury – for more than forty years. Monuments across North Britain have now received similar treatment: Robert Burns in Dumfries, David Hume on the Royal Mile, the Loch Ness Monster in Inverness. The practice has divided opinion at home. It has baffled audiences abroad entirely. This Author is of the view that any nation capable of exporting its traffic cone customs to the American Colonies whilst simultaneously competing in a World Cup deserves, at the very least, a polite round of applause.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.