Ian Dunt

Not even 9am. So far on Radio 6, the news bulletins have featured a mother saying her daughters aren't safe because of asylum seekers, a Tory politician lambasting Labour for crossing numbers & Badenoch encouraging councils to lodge legal challenges against hotels. An endless stream of hateful bile.

This is CNN, a channel I really enjoy when I'm in the US. I wonder if American journalists are aware of how completely insane they look to the rest of the world. How utterly detached their narrative is from everyone else's. edition.cnn.com/2025/08/19/p...

This is how you protect your democracy. The US is a demonstration of what happens when you don't. www.theguardian.com/world/2025/s...

He knows literally nothing about what's going on over here and his views are worth even less than that

There is a light that never goes out: After a grim chaotic week, there is now a glimmer of hope iandunt.substack.com/p/there-is-a...

I also really object to italicising the swearing. Swear words already have emphasis, by virtue of being themselves.

Burnham has set himself a hard task, but I dont think we really know the dynamics of a by-election serving as a test prime ministerial run from a popular local figure, because it's madness and has never happened.

No. I am working on the assumption that a) Starmer will not detonate the Labour party by blocking him and 2) even if he wants to, it's not clear he has total control of the NEC anymore. Both highly uncertain conclusions.

Obviously a major challenge to win that seat. An even bigger challenge to win a Reform/Labour marginal while simultaneously securing leadership election support from a left-wing constituency. Whatever else you might think about him, Burnham is taking very, very big swings.

Starmer's strongest defence was the division of his opponents. But Streetings letter showed the right and the left of the party are now coalescing around a process. That suggests it's basically game over. inews.co.uk/opinion/star...

Holy shit it's on.

'He is an absence where a leader should be, a pile of clothes with no body to animate them': The English version of the piece I wrote for El Pais on the failure of the Starmer project is up here, with this rather elegant illustration english.elpais.com/internationa...

Britain is a wealthy law-abiding country, with a long shared history, a vibrant civic society and robust institutions. It is not in any way ungovernable and suggesting it is lets the people who should be governing it off the hook.