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The prisons, Gentle Reader, are full. Not merely full in the way a gentleman’s diary is full, where one might squeeze in an additional engagement with a little creative rescheduling. Full as in: should one more soul be directed through their iron gates, the walls themselves may simply politely request everyone leave. And yet, on this Sunday morning, Lord Burnham has announced that several hundred more souls shall remain precisely where they are.
The cause is PC Harper, the young officer dragged to his death in Berkshire in 2019 by three fleeing teenagers, whose killers – among them Jessie Cole and Albert Bowers – were on the verge of early release. Lord Burnham, moved by months of campaigning from the officer’s family, has announced that all those convicted of unlawful killing, including manslaughter, shall be excluded from the early release scheme. Harper’s mother, Debbie Adlam, welcomed the decision with a grace this Author finds entirely becoming, whilst noting, with admirable restraint, that “the overall system has left some huge gaps still.” She is not wrong. The adult male prison estate runs at ninety-eight percent capacity. Lord Burnham‘s solution – deporting foreign prisoners, releasing those on controversial indefinite sentences, and building new cells – is, as his own colleagues quietly concede, not exactly a rapid fix. One does not solve a burst dam by ordering a new one from the catalogue. Still, the announcement has been made, the family has wept with relief, and the War Office for Justice shall simply have to manage the arithmetic.
How exactly Lord Burnham has found this capacity where previously none existed is a question his own ministers cannot quite answer. Legislation to end indefinite sentences could take years. Deportations of foreign offenders have confounded previous governments entirely – one need only consider the case of a certain grooming gang ringleader whom Pakistan has declined to receive with any enthusiasm. Building new cells shall take months. The War Office for Justice warned only earlier this month that further exemptions risked the prison system “collapsing.” Lord Burnham, it seems, has looked the abyss in the eye and decided the abyss shall simply have to budge up.
From matters of earthly justice to a loss of a more spiritual sort. This Author must set down her pen a moment in tribute to Pastor Robert Guanco, forty-one years of age, a servant of the Jesus the Living Water Church in Eastbourne, who was killed on Friday when a sign fell at the Grand Gathering of the Devout near Steyning in West Sussex. Six others were injured. The festival, which describes itself as the United Kingdom’s largest Christian gathering, became the site of what Pastor Norman Ponce called an “unimaginable tragedy” – and the phrase requires no embellishment from this Author. Pastor Guanco is remembered as a faithful husband to Isay, a devoted father to Ellie, and a blessing, by all accounts, to every soul he encountered. His church has invited mourners to Eastbourne this very Sunday. That his daughter’s birthday falls on the same day renders the occasion almost unbearably poignant. This Author offers no wit here – only a quiet, sincere condolence.
To lighter, if not entirely cheerful, affairs. A French fishing vessel sank south-west of the Eddystone Lighthouse off Plymouth on Saturday evening, sending its distress call at six o’clock. Three crew members were rescued and conveyed to hospital. Two remain unaccounted for, with lifeboats from Newlyn and Salcombe continuing the search this morning, relieving the Plymouth and Falmouth crews who laboured through the night. The English Channel has long possessed the manners of a very bad-tempered host, and this weekend it has once again demonstrated its indifference to human plans. This Author follows the search with every hope that the morning brings better news.
And now – because no column of this Author’s would be complete without at least one ambitious gentleman announcing himself to the world – we turn to Sir James Cleverly, who has resigned from the shadow cabinet to seek the Tory nomination for Mayor of the Capital. The seat in question shall not even be contested until May 2028, a fact that appears to trouble Sir James not one jot. He has declared, with the confidence of a man who has already mentally redecorated City Hall, that the Capital has been “let down by Labour” and that Lord Burnham treats it as a “cash cow.” Lady Badenoch, we are told, “really didn’t want James to leave shadow cabinet” – which is precisely the sort of endorsement one offers when one has no power to prevent a departure. The incumbent, Lord Mayor of the Capital, has not yet confirmed whether he intends a fourth term. Two years is, by the standards of political ambition, an eternity. This Author shall keep her lorgnette trained on the Capital and report accordingly.
I am, as ever, your most devoted observer – Lady Whistledown.