The Bunker – News without the nonsense

The pubs are back! Can the Great British Public drink the county back to economic health? Plus, did the deeply strange Prince Philip memorial weekend give us any pointers to the future fate of the Monarchy? Should we give up hoping for ‘normal’ politics to come back? And why shouldn’t there be a black James Bond ?  “AstraZeneca? I’d have taken a North Korean vaccine if they offered me.”  – Justin...

As England scratches at the doors of pubs and hairdressers like a starving cat, Yasmeen Serhan joins Andrew Harrison to set out the week’s news stories. Are we on for a retail superspreader event? Plus the Cameron-Greensill scandal gets worse, London decides to let Northern Ireland stew, Prince Philip is still dead… and Ramadan for dummies (i.e. Andrew).  “ If you guys want this change to be perma...

When digital artist Dan Hett tragically lost his brother Martin in the 2017 Manchester bombings, he turned to the world of interactive fiction to help him understand what had happened – and ultimately he produced the game ‘Closed Hands’ , which examines the causes and effects of a terrorist attack in a fictional UK city. Dan talks to Arthur Snell about the fascinating world of interactive fiction...

Content warning: Includes discussion of sexual violence and abuse. What is it like being an “activist prosecutor” in a legal system hampered by institutional prejudice and often indifference? Former chief prosecutor Nazir Afzal tells The Observer ’s Nick Cohen about his memoir The Prosecutor: One Man’s Pursuit for Justice for the Voiceless and what it reveals about British justice. Why are margina...

Good news, everyone! Institutional racism is over, at least according to the Government-sponsored Sewell Report into racial disparity in the UK. As the report falls to pieces in plain sight, special guest Matthew Ryder QC (former London Deputy Mayor for social integration) joins Ayesha Hazarika, Ahir Shah and Ros Taylor to discuss a textbook example of selecting your conclusion before looking for...

Russia is massing troops on the Ukrainian border. Does Putin just want to hand Biden his first test, or is there more to it? Plus: the tangled mess that is vaccine passports. Why your foreign holiday is probably off this year. Keir Starmer under a cloud on his first anniversary as Labour leader. And what’s going on in Jordan? Arthur Snell sets out the week ahead.  “ It ’ s a bad look for an opposi...

What is it like being one of the few black people at Eton and Oxford? And what do they actual teach our future rulers? Musa Okwonga is the author One of Them: An Eton College Memoir , and host of the Stadio football podcast. He talks to Alex Andreou about imperial pride in private schools, why Brexit led him to move to “the heart of Europe”, and whether Spurs will make it to the Champions League…...

When writer Erica Buist had the traumatic experience of finding her partner’s father dead in his home, it led her to ask why we respond to death with fear and sadness – and ultimately to travel from Mexico to Nepal and beyond to research the surprisingly uplifting book This Party's Dead : Grief, Joy And Spilled Rum At The World's Death Festivals . She talks to Arthur Snell about greeting the dead...

What will the Sturgeon/Salmond stand-off mean for the SNP’s make-or-break bid for re-election and a second independence referendum? And can an independent Scotland pay its way? SNP Cabinet Secretary for Finance Kate Forbes is our special guest. Plus: What’s behind Johnson’s defence plans for fewer soldiers and more nukes? And Alan Turing is on the £50 note but will the Queen be on our banknotes fo...

Outdoor “mingling” is back but as the Government bets all on the vaccine, are they ignoring the danger of new COVID variants? And if/when it all goes wrong, will it somehow be Europe’s fault again? Plus the possible Labour reshuffle, the SNP vs the Alba Party and what Johnson’s affair with Jennifer Arcuri really means. Ian Dunt explains the week ahead. “ The only Government strategy is the vaccine...

With Brexit opening a Pandora’s Box of irrational nationalism in England, and Scotland and Northern Ireland heading to the exit door, the break-up of the United Kingdom is no longer a weird fantasy but a real possibility. Nick Cohen talks to the writer, broadcaster and card-carrying Scot Gavin Esler about his new book How Britain Ends , and the forces that could pull Britain apart. Can the Union b...

Are we ready to live alongside artificial minds? And why do we still harbour a Terminator-style fear of vengeful machines? Oxford University Professor of Computer Science Michael Wooldridge , author of The Road to Conscious Machines , says we are on the brink of a great transformation in artificial intelligence. He talks to Alex Andreou about deepmind superhuman gamer bots, debunking our fear of F...

Constitutions are the rulebooks of government, but how does each country get its own peculiar arrangements? Linda Colley , author of The Gun, The Ship, And The Pen: War, Constitutions And The Making Of The Modern World , tells Ros Taylor about the extraordinary circumstances – from Napoleon to Catherine the Great to America’s Founding Fathers – that produced the operating systems for states. Why w...

What makes someone give up a lucrative job in the City of London to risk their life fighting ISIS in Syria – with no prior military training? In one of our most astonishing interviews, Macer Gifford describes how he left the UK to spend three long tours fighting with the Kurdish YPG militia against the brutal terror group Islamic State. He tells Arthur Snell what it’s like to cross into a warzone,...

Which flavour of police overreach do you like least: COVID regulations if you’re on the right, or the Police Bill if you’re centre-left? Special guest Emily Benn joins us to disentangle the worsening mess of civil rights under this government. And with Line Of Duty returning as British policing is in the spotlight as seldom before, do we need a conversation about “ Copaganda ” entertainment in the...

The EU:UK vaccine export row: who’s in the right and will a friendly phone call from Boris Johnson sort it all out like it always does? On the anniversary of Lockdown 1, will the pandemic regulations face a rocky renewal? And Christmas comes early for lucky Priti Patel as the Bristol rioters breathe life back into her illiberal Police Bill. Alex Andreou sets up the week ahead. “ The danger of the...

A bonus weekend edition…  Finding inspiration in the midst of pandemic can be difficult, but how hard is it to write a book about a city you can’t visit because of lockdown? And how has the Church fared during this period of enforced isolation? Author and practising Christian Francis Spufford talks to Ros Taylor about his new novel Light Perpetual , the “incredibly natural” failure of imagination...

The Grenfell tragedy exposed the worst of a housing crisis which affects some 8 million people and leaves one in seven people in unaffordable or unsuitable homes. How did we get into this mess and how do we get out of it? Why can’t we build enough houses in the right places? Alex Andreou talks to Catherine Ryder , Director of Policy and Research at the National Housing Federation, and Steve Cole o...

For British intelligence, Soviet mole George Blake was possibly the most damaging traitor of the whole Cold War. Towards the end of Blake’s life the FT’s Simon Kuper met the ageing defector for “the most extraordinary interview of my life.” He tells Arthur Snell about his book The Happy Traitor , which sets out Blake’s astonishing journey from comically patriotic British citizen through his time o...

Is Britain as divided over COVID as we were over Brexit? Do people really think that if you lost your job during the pandemic, it’s your fault? And if Brexity pundits are so anti-lockdown, why are Leave voters largely in favour of restrictions? Bobby Duffy (Director of the Policy Institute at King’s College ) and Paula Surridge (Deputy Director of the UK in a Changing Europe) have researched our c...

The Metropolitan Police’s brutal intervention during Saturday’s vigil Sarah Everard leaves the country aghast. What really happened? What needs to change if British cities are to be safe for women? Special guest Alex Massie of The Times and The Spectator joins us to look at the “fantastically illiberal” Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, and give his personal crash course on Scottish polit...

The Met’s outrageous clampdown on the Sarah Everard vigil on Clapham Common has put Priti Patel’s draconian Police, Crime, Sentencing And Courts Bill under a harsh spotlight. Could a bill that effectively outlaws public protest blow up in the Government’s face this week? Ros Taylor explains.  “ Public protest has become illegal, and we didn ’ t seem to notice that.”  “ A protest looks very differe...

“Peter explains better than anyone I know the new world of Putinesque, Trumpian propaganda.” In a weekend bonus, Nick Cohen of The Observer talks to Peter Pomerantsev , author of This Is Not Propaganda : Adventures in the War Against Reality , about how demagogues warp free speech into a weapon against democracy. Why is the modern information battle less of a New Cold War and more a New Thirty Yea...

Few countries exercise such world-wide fascination while being as little understood outside their own borders as Japan. Christopher Harding , author of The Japanese: A History In 20 Lives , talks to Ros Taylor about the key figures who shaped Japan over the centuries, from princesses and samurai to pop culture visionaries. “ A British delegate who visited Japan in the 1990s said ‘ If this is a rec...

Yemen is suffering the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, a conflict that has killed some 100,000 people since 2015 and left 24m in peril. Now it’s dragging countries across the region into its vortex. How did we get here? Exactly how are Saudi Arabia and Iran involved? Will the election of Joe Biden make a difference? Arthur Snell talks to Laura Cretney , a PhD student at Durham University who wo...