Wednesday afternoon/evening, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak finally announced the date for Britain’s general election. Everyone knew it was coming, but I’m not sure people realized that Sunak would set the date for Day 4 of the Wimbledon Championships. Sunak won’t stop until we get John McEnroe providing election updates from the ESPN booth, istg. Well, it’s been so long since Britain had a real general election, people sort of forgot that their “royal family” is supposed to not only remain apolitical, but the royals are supposed to stay quiet and mostly out of sight during an election cycle. Wouldn’t you know, suddenly the already-strained “working royals” have a perfect excuse to take a holiday for two months. Wouldn’t you know, July is when they usually start their summer holidays too. We won’t see most of the Windsors until September or October, right?

The Royal Family is postponing engagements “which may appear to divert attention or distract from the election campaign”, Buckingham Palace has announced. It comes after Rishi Sunak called a general election for 4 July.

A statement from the King and Queen said: “Following the Prime Minister’s statement this afternoon calling a general election, the royal family will – in accordance with normal procedure – postpone engagements that may appear to divert attention or distract from the election campaign. Their Majesties send their sincere apologies to any of those who may be affected as a result.”

The King and Queen’s D-Day 80th anniversary appearances in Portsmouth and Normandy in June are expected to go ahead as scheduled. However, the announcement will disrupt other events in the carefully planned forthcoming royal diaries.

The King could be set for the third prime minister of his reign. The prime minister revealed he spoke with the King earlier on Wednesday to inform him of his decision and the King had agreed to the request for the dissolution of Parliament.

[From Sky News]

Rebecca English did a series of tweets with information she was likely getting directly from Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace. I’ll summarize. Prince William won’t have any other events this week, and he’s already canceled an unannounced (“surprise”) event for today, Thursday. We can also safely say that no one will ask where the Princess of Wales is until July now, correct? English confirms that Charles, Camilla and William will still fly to Normandy for the D-Day anniversary, and it’s likely the Japanese state visit will also go ahead. They’re not saying for sure that Trooping the Colour and the Order of the Garter event will go ahead as planned, but it’s likely they will. Some of the Windsors might also come out for Royal Ascot in June as well. Gee, it sounds like much of the big events will still go ahead and only Huevo’s busy-work events are being canceled. Not sus at all!

Photos courtesy of Cover Images.