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Thirty-seven billion pounds for a missile. Twenty-eight million pounds for hanging up on one’s customers. And not a single major party willing to stand against Viscount Farage in Clacton. This Author submits, without reservation, that Wednesday the eighth of July, 2026 is a day that could only have been invented by a satirist who had given up entirely on subtlety.
Viscount Farage, facing parliamentary investigation into his finances and the sort of scrutiny that makes lesser men perspire through their waistcoats, has done something quite magnificent: he has resigned his seat, declared himself a martyr of the people, and demanded that Clacton ratify his virtue at the ballot box. One might call this bold. One might equally call it the political equivalent of upending the chessboard and declaring oneself a chess genius. Lady Cooper, serving as Foreign Secretary, called it a “political tantrum” – which is accurate, entertaining, and unlikely to stop anyone. Lady Badenoch declared the whole affair a “fake election” and refused to field a candidate. The Liberal Democrat Society, the Verdant Society, and the Progressive Assembly have likewise declined to participate, on the grounds that they would rather not lose. Viscount Farage‘s allies claim rivals are “running scared”. His rivals claim it is a stunt. The people of Clacton, one imagines, are simply tired.
Meanwhile, in the Turkish capital of Ankara, Lord Starmer has arrived at the Grand Alliance of Nations’ summit bearing a rather expensive gift: a £37 billion commitment, shared across twelve countries, to build a long-range precision missile capable of striking targets up to 1,250 miles distant. It is called the Deep Precision Strike project, which sounds considerably more impressive than “we are trying to appear serious before Lord Trump notices”. Lord Trump, for his part, is expected to remark pointedly that Lord Starmer has not yet committed to spending 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2035. The missile, one notes, will not be ready until the 2030s. This Author does so enjoy a plan that is simultaneously very expensive and not yet necessary.
For those who had hoped to discuss something other than politics, the Meteorological Office obliges with news that the Kingdom is enduring one of its longest-lasting heatwaves since 1976. Amber heat-health alerts cover the Midlands, eastern and southern Southern Kingdom; yellow alerts extend northward; and the Crown Health Security Agency warns of significant impacts on health services through to the twelfth of July. Temperatures reached 32.4°C at Teddington and in Frittenden, Kent on Tuesday, with 35°C or more expected in the coming days. The Northern Province and North Britain may reach the high twenties by Friday. This Author notes, with the grim satisfaction of one who has lived through many an English summer, that the nation is simultaneously too hot to govern and too stubborn to admit it.
And if the air above is suffering, so too is the sea below. The Meteorological Office warns of an “extreme” marine heatwave building off the coasts of eastern and southern Southern Kingdom, with sea temperatures running 4 to 5°C above average. Seagrasses, kelp forests, and shellfish face what scientists describe with admirable restraint as “mass mortality events”. Cod are moving north. Octopus, those warm-water opportunists, are arriving in south-west waters in greater numbers. This Author cannot help but observe that while the nation’s politicians argue about who shall stand in Clacton, the octopus is quietly taking over Cornwall.
On a matter that requires no wit whatsoever to convey its gravity: The Office of Communications has fined Virgin Media £28 million for the rather remarkable business practice of deliberately hanging up on customers who wished to cancel their contracts. Over a three-year period, millions of calls were, in the regulator’s careful phrasing, “likely mishandled” – through excessive transfers, deliberate disconnections, and extended holds for no reason. The commission structure, one understands, financially rewarded agents for this behaviour. Virgin Media has apologised to what it describes as a “small proportion” of affected customers, a phrase that will warm precisely no hearts among those who spent forty-five minutes on hold before being cut off. The fine was reduced by 30% because Virgin admitted its failings. This Author considers this rather like receiving credit for confessing to picking one’s neighbour’s roses after the gardener has already given testimony.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.