The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Summing up the key stories of the past seven days…  Reform and the far-right seize on the murder of student Henry Nowak to foment violent protests and provoke a national political row. Has Farage’s opportunism pushed his luck too far? Plus: What was in that a fresh batch of Mandelson files; Putin’s “Russian Davos” goes wrong; notable deaths from the past week; and who should replace Churchill and...

Hot Take Time Machine is back and our crack squad of column critics are sniffing out the weirdest, worst and occasionally the best opinions from the last month.   Paper Cuts survivors Miranda Sawyer and Jonn Elledge join Jacob Jarvis to pick apart The Telegraph’s terrible take on youth unemployment, The Mail’s Liz Jones having “one big moan” and one Times writer who is fed up with tasteful hen-dos...

OpenAI chief Sam Altman once wrote that the most successful people don’t build companies, they “create religions”. Will artificial intelligence really solve humanity’s greatest problems and elevate humans to a heaven-like state like the tech bros claim – or just ruin our civilisation? Best-selling author and investigative journalist Karen Hao gained unprecedented access to OpenAI to unearth the st...

Democratic rights and freedoms have expanded for a century or more, yet the super-rich have never been richer and wealth has never been shared less fairly. And we keep on voting to prop up systems that make a bad situation worse. Why? Political scientist and author Jeffrey Winters has a theory – that oligarchic power isn’t an unforeseen product of democracies, it’s designed into the system. So how...

A huge dump of messages linked to Peter Mandelson are about to drop – what can we expect and who’s the most nervous? Alex von Tunzelmann joins Jacob Jarvis to discuss the news to look out for in the week ahead, from domestic news and Labour fallout to the consequences of conflict across the globe.    www.patreon.com/bunkercast       Written and presented by Jacob Jarvis with Alex von Tunzelmann. A...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing for The Bunker.  Tony Blair has weighed in on Labour’s direction – but what does he actually want? Plus: Pope Leo warns about the rise of AI, a major review warns Britain risks creating a “lost generation” of young people, and a buffalo that resembles Donald Trump... Jacob Jarvis is joined by Rafael Behr to unpack the...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. Iran’s hardline regime may have weathered Donald Trump’s onslaught for now – but behind Teheran’s defiance there are deep cracks in its hated, repressive system. They go right back to the genesis and betrayal of the 1979 Revolution, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini promised freedom, independence and prosperity only to...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. Is time finally running out for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu? The Knesset has voted to dissolve itself, the horrors of October 7th still haunt his coalition, and a newly united opposition is closing in. With right-wing Naftali Bennett and centre-left Yair Lapid joining forces and their Together party neck...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Last chance to get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing.  Setting up the stories for the next seven… sorry, six days. As Britain suffers unprecedented May heatwaves, can Ed Miliband defend Net Zero from the denialists in Reform and the oil-funded PR greenwashers? Plus, Nigel Farage’s excuses for his £5m gift from a crypto baron start to catch up with him. Cou...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday!  Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing for The Bunker.  The Makerfield by-election is heating up, with Andy Burnham officially entering the race. But what does he really stand for? As he pitches both locally and nationally, we’re a bit confused. Plus: Donald Trump granted tax immunity, the T-Rex arms race, and Keir Starmer waters down Russian oil sanctions...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. The Doomsday crowd was once confined to fringe congregations and rural survivalists stockpiling beans and ammunition. Now it’s gone mainstream, with one in three Americans believing the world will end in their lifetimes. So why do so many people think the end is nigh? Did Ruby Ridge start it all? And is the Trump admi...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. Donald Trump came, he saw, and left Beijing without much to show for his high-stakes summit with Xi Jinping. Behind the pomp and pageantry, tensions over trade, tech and Taiwan didn’t go away. So did two days of diplomacy actually achieve anything? And can Xi’s vision of “great rejuvenation” coexist with Trump’s “Make...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off   a year’s Patreon backing. Donald Trump is taking a wrecking ball to Washington and rebuilding it in his own image. Is his architectural upheaval pure vanity, or is something more ominous at play?  Political philosopher, historian and author Professor Jan-Werner Müller joins Alex von Tunzelmann to discuss why remaking the capital is the signa...

•  It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing.    Setting up the stories of the next seven days… Has Andy Burnham set Labour up for a potential extinction event by forcing a by-election in the not-very-safe seat of Makerfield? By making the about rejoining the EU, has Streeting handed Reform a golden chance to turn the vote into Referendum 2.0? Plus Reeves’ cost...

It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off   a year’s Patreon backing. Early release as the news is moving fast…  Keir Starmer’s wild week is feeling more and more disastrous. As the PM clings on to power (by the time you hear this, that may have changed) , who’s waiting in the wings? Wes Streeting resigned right after we recorded the episode, so who knows what’s next… Plus, Xi Jinping r...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. Reform could well land a colossal freak victory and total power over the UK at the next General Election. Britain’s first-past-the-post electoral system is struggling to cope with our new five-party system. As voters desert Labour and the Tories in droves, has proportional representation ’s moment finally come? Should...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off  a year’s Patreon backing . Wars around the globe are drawing eerie comparisons with the late 19th and early 20th Century, when Great Powers clashed in an atmosphere of nationalist populism. Are we – like then – on an inevitable march toward world war, or already deep in a second Cold War?  Yale historian and Cold War expert Professor Odd Arne...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday!  Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing.  The German town of Weimar exudes a dark fascination, and not just because Hitler loved to visit it. How did Germany’s cultural capital – home of the Bauhaus, Goethe, Schiller and the doomed inter-war experiment with democracy – also become one of Nazism’s earliest strongholds and the location for the Buchenwald conc...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off   a year’s Patreon backing. Keir Starmer’s position looks more precarious than ever after the local elections. How will moves against him pan out? Gavin Esler joins Jacob Jarvis to discuss this and the other news to look out for in the week ahead.  www.patreon.com/bunkercast     • Advertisers! Want to reach smart, engaged, influential people w...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. Farage is under fire for pocketing a £5m “personal gift” from a crypto billionaire. What’s his excuse? Plus, the Hantavirus-stricken MV Hondius is finally heading to port, but will the crisis really be over when it docks? And with Trump's “Project Freedom” on ice, what on earth is happening in the Strait of Hormuz? Ja...

GLP-1s like Wegovy and Ozempic have become a huge deal. But how much do we actually know about what they do? And what pros and cons do we need to balance? Natasha Devon is joined by nutrition coach and fitness expert Michael Ulloa to discuss.  • It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing. • Back us on Patreon – www.patreon.com/bunkercast     Written and presented...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off   a year’s Patreon backing. Our double-header on everything you need to know about this week’s devolved elections… In Scotland voters are gearing up for what’s being dubbed the “meh election” and the so-called “scunner factor” is well and truly sinking in. With Reform’s English nationalists eyeing up Holyrood, the SNP faces a fight to keep Sco...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday! Get an extra 10% off   a year’s Patreon backing. A double-header on what you need to know about this week’s national elections: In Wales Labour could face an historic annihilation that will reverberate through the whole country. Should they blame Starmer or their own poor government? Will Plaid Cymru have to choose between the Greens and what’s left of Labour as c...

• It’s Podmasters’ 10th birthday!  Get an extra 10% off a year’s Patreon backing.  Setting out the stories of the week ahead… As Labour braces itself for a battering in the local, Scottish and Welsh elections, Reform have an idea to liven things up: punishing anyone who votes Green by putting migrant detention centres in their constituency. Plus: What Russia’s scaled-down, tank-and-missile-free ‘V...

They wear suits, sport shades and say almost nothing. The Secret Service deliberately operates in the shadows but a third assassination attempt on Donald Trump has suddenly put them in the spotlight. So what exactly do they do all day? And what does it take to protect the president? Former agent Mike de Gues , who previously guarded Trump, gives Gavin Esler the insider story.  • It’s Podmasters’ 1...