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Dearest Gentle Reader,
Chocolate and margarine are cheaper. Prisoners may be released early. A thirteen-year-old prince has been photographed in a suit. This Author surveys Wednesday’s dispatches and concludes that the Kingdom is, as ever, a country of very particular preoccupations.
The Office of National Statistics has delivered the season’s most curious gift: inflation in the Kingdom has fallen to 2.6%, driven in no small part by reductions in the price of sugar, chocolate, beef, and – most poetically – edible offal. One may now acquire liver and kidneys at a considerably reduced rate, which This Author is certain will transform the nation’s dinner tables entirely. Pizza and quiches have fallen by 6.7% in the year to June, which represents excellent news for anyone whose social engagements skew towards the informal. Lord Burnham and his government will smile upon these figures, though analysts warn the good cheer is temporary: higher energy prices in July are expected to push inflation upward once more. Joy, it seems, is priced at a fixed-term rate.
Yet the question of what one does with cheaper chocolate becomes rather moot if one considers the news from the War Office for Justice. Two men convicted of the manslaughter of police constable Andrew Harper – dragged to his death down a country road in Berkshire in 2019 at only twenty-eight years of age – may now be eligible for early release at the halfway point of their thirteen-year sentences. His mother has described the prospect as “a slap in the face and an insult.” This Author finds that description entirely apt and would not improve upon it with any additional flourish. Lord Burnham confirmed that the driver of the vehicle, who received sixteen years, would not qualify for the scheme – but on the broader question of whether killers, rapists and those who prey upon children might be exempt, the government has so far declined to provide a clear answer. One hopes clarity arrives before September, when the new Sentencing Act comes into force.
And speaking of matters best handled with precision: the early release scheme claimed a second victim this very Wednesday, though this time the casualties were purely reputational. Lord Streeting, Lord Burnham‘s Defence Secretary, was captured on a hot microphone appearing to jest with Lady Mahmood about releasing prisoners – calling the incoming Justice Secretary “the enemy now” and adding that “he wants to let them all out.” That the whole exchange was filmed and published ought perhaps to have been anticipated in an age when every corridor of power is attended by a dozen lenses. Both Lord Streeting and Lady Mahmood have since apologised, invoking an ancient joke between former Conservative ministers as their defence. Lady Badenoch was, predictably, unmollified, posting on Elon’s Lair with all the measured restraint one has come to expect. The moral of the story, Gentle Reader: assume every microphone is live, always.
On a note that is lighter only in the way that well-cut dark wool can sometimes feel lighter, Kensington Palace has released a birthday portrait of Prince George, who has turned thirteen and arrived at adolescence wearing a suit. The photograph, taken by Matt Porteous following the Trooping the Colour ceremony last month, shows the young prince standing with his hands in his pockets with the particular ease of someone who has been told to look natural and has concluded that pockets are the answer. It is a more formal composition than last year’s rural offering, in which the prince wore a gilet and a friendship bracelet – and rightly so, for he is shortly to follow his father, the Prince of Wales, to Eton College. The Duke of Sussex also attended, a fact the Palace notes without elaboration. Thirteen years old, suited, and second in line to the throne. Wednesday has witnessed younger shoulders carry heavier things.
From the corridors of Imperial College comes a finding that demands the nation’s attention rather more urgently than the price of margarine. Researchers have identified a worrying rise in type 2 diabetes among young women in their twenties in the Southern Kingdom, a trend that has accelerated sharply since the pandemic and is closely linked to rising obesity levels. Some 12,000 people under the age of thirty are now living with the condition, with women forming a growing proportion of younger cases. The disease, at this earlier stage of life, tends to be more aggressive and carries higher risks of devastating complications. Researchers suggest that newer treatments – including the fashionable GLP-1 jabs that have lately commanded so much dinner-party conversation – may assist, alongside that most radical of interventions: eating well and keeping active. This Author makes no further comment, save to observe that a nation cheaply supplied with sugar and chocolate is perhaps laying the groundwork for tomorrow’s diagnoses today.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.