A mixed week for Theresa May. On the one hand: she gave a speech on synthetic changes to her withdrawal agreement bill, the sequencing of which before the European elections is best described as “actual lunacy”; she was widely panned even by her previous supporters for said speech; she faced cabinet mutiny; she was forced to accept the resignation of leader of the house Andrea Leadsom; and she has her latest showdown meeting with 1922 Committee chairman Graham Brady lined up for Friday, during which he is highly likely to insist she finally do one. On the other hand: Geri Halliwell invited her to the upcoming Spice Girls tour. Downing Street says the prime minister is “considering” the invitation, adding: “We’re grateful for the message.”

Well, you can only ask, can’t you? It is possible, of course, that Theresa May will have a lot on when the Spice Girls begin their much-hyped tour on Friday night. It is also possible, of course, that she will be very, very free.

Anyway, back to the bilateral power extending the invitation. “I really want Theresa May at the show,” opined Geri. “I’m not talking about politics; can you imagine showing up to work every day and getting verbally assassinated by all the people around you?” Is this about the All Saints? “It doesn’t matter who you are,” Geri went on, “if you face that at work, I feel really sorry for her. Come on, give the woman some credit, she’s certainly stoic.”

We don’t yet know if Stoic Spice will take up the invitation. But in making her deliberations, she should consider that you simply can’t put a value on any encounter with Geri and the gang, other than to say it is probably literally priceless. Shortly after he had met the Spice Girls in 1997, Nelson Mandela was badgered by British journalists to give a sense of how the meeting had made him feel. “I don’t want to be emotional,” he twinkled, “but this is one of the greatest moments of my life.”

Geri & Co took this comment at face value – and why wouldn’t they? During the encounter, Mel B had compared their “girl power” quest with the anti-apartheid movement. The Spice Girls have always had an acute sense of how their story fits into history. Or, more accurately, how history fits into their story.

Of course, in their line of work, they are not alone in this solipsistic view of all that has gone before – and, presumably, all that will come after. When Justin Bieber visited the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, he left a powerful message in the guestbook. “Truly inspiring to be able to come here. Anne was a great girl. Hopefully she would have been a Belieber.”

And so, though infinitely less horrifyingly, with the Spices. Various historical figures have been characterised as “the first Spice Girl” down the years. Margaret Thatcher was thus described by Geri in the group’s famous Spectator interview in 1996, which serious commentators fell over themselves to parse. “It would be difficult to imagine Baroness Thatcher in hot pants, a spandex vest, and patent-leather thigh boots,” wrote one Independent journalist, who’d obviously never met any Tory backbenchers, much less had an appreciation of the more standard fare they’d cracked one off to.

More recently, Geri made a late entry into the Churchill culture war by deciding Winston had, in fact, been the first Spice Girl. “Even Winston Churchill got fired,” she told a Sunday Times interviewer in February. “Did you know that? He won a war for us and he got fired. For me, Winston Churchill is the original Spice Girl. That is the one to follow.”

To follow – and yet, sometimes, to lead. Although Churchill did not address his early years in print until his 50s, Geri Halliwell had bestowed two autobiographies on the world before she was 30, with Just for the Record coming a mere three years after If Only. Incidentally, if that former title feels somehow familiar, perhaps it’s because it was recently announced that David Cameron has opted to entitle his forthcoming memoir For the Record. This slight adjustment – and who knows, perhaps aspects of the text itself – is presumably intended to distinguish it from Geri’s Just for The Record. And, indeed, from the official biography of Status Quo, which is also called Just for the Record. Even so, I’m not sure it is wise for Cameron to stray anywhere near titular territory that might previously have been considered the Quo’s, for fear of drawing unfortunate comparisons. They opened Live Aid, David – what have you ever done? Still, I’m sure Cameron will be contemplating the answer to that question in due course. (As, indeed, will I – most likely in a three-week series of facetious columns when the book itself drops.)

Anyhow, back to current events, and a sense that perhaps yet another PM has become a Spice Girl in recent times. There were hints back in the Sunday Times interview that Geri was moving toward classifying a third British prime leader thusly. “Anybody who is standing up, no matter what they’re rooting for, you’ve got to give them credit,” she observed of Theresa May. “She’s doing her best with what she’s got, so she deserves a bit of support for that, for God’s sake. I would like to see [how] somebody else [gets on] standing there, because that is a hard job.”

Hmm. I think we’d all like to see how someone else gets on at this late stage in proceedings – though not, of course, a lot of the potential candidates for the Tory leadership. While we wait to see who next ends up on Spice World’s VIP guestlist, then, I do hope most of us can agree that Blond Spice in particular feels like one to avoid.

Meghan Markle and Lizzie Cundy – one very fast friendship

The parade of grasping no-marks who claim that Meghan Markle ghosted them soon after her romance with Prince Harry began swells by the week. Latest to join it is one Lizzie Cundy, who seems to have parlayed a brief encounter with Meghan at a 2013 party into a tale of deep friendship sundered – and now into a series of presumably lucrative newspaper articles. Lizzie is always described as a “TV personality” – I have never seen evidence of either – but apparently initially shot to public unconsciousness as the wife of former footballer Jason Cundy.

Anyway, here she is on this chance meeting at a charity dinner with Meghan: “We were having a girly chat and then she said: ‘Do you know any famous guys? I’m single and I really love Englishmen.’ So I said: ‘We’ll go out and find you someone.’”

They never did go out, of course – this is just the sort of thing someone might randomly say in the course of smalltalk – but, presumably in light of what went on to happen in Meghan’s life, Lizzie seems bent on seeming wildly affronted that she isn’t at the palace every week drinking prosecco and they aren’t plaiting each other’s hair. Indeed, she seems convinced she gave her absolute all to coming up with the perfect answer to Meghan’s non-request request. Rifling through the absolute limited-edition section of her “perfect guys” Rolodex, she selected the ultimate candidate to gift her new best friend. Or as the Mail has it: “Lizzie said she showed the former Suits star … a picture of footballer Ashley Cole.”

Right. I mean: who among us could begin to put our finger on why this nascent sisterhood never took hold? I guess sometimes you give someone the best of the best, but they don’t know what’s good for them, leaving you with no course but to go to the newspapers and explain just what unfortunate things this says about them.