The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Amid the chaos of the Capitol Invasion of January 6, keen observers could spot the iconography of Valkism , a weird confected “religion” born out of video game culture that’s now empowering QAnon and far right politics. Former Government advisor and BBC and Reuters correspondent Amil Khan tells Arthur Snell about the crossover of video games, 4Chan, 8Chan and far right politics which produced Valk...

It’s the end of an era! As parents collapse weeping to their knees in a fug of gin, has home schooling changed how we teach kids? Will in-school testing stick? And will the experience shine a light on the God-awfulness of the National Curriculum? PLUS: After that derisory nurses’ pay offer , how long ’til the U-Turn? Porklife as the Government shovels “levelling up” money to Tory constituencies. F...

What does today’s International Women’s Day stand for when we’re in the middle of a new wave of feminism? What can women expect from government when its fill-in Equalities Minister thinks there ought to be a Minister for Men? Naomi Smith presents a special edition with regulars Nina Schick and Minnie Rahman plus special guest Jude Kelly , former artistic director of the Southbank Centre and founde...

Novelist Sergei Lebedev writes forensically detailed books which uncover how Soviet history still exerts its power on modern Russians. According to the New York Review of Books he’s “the best of Russia’s younger generation of writers.” He talks to Alex Andreou about his latest novel, the COVID-relevant thriller Untraceable ; precarious life in the new Russia; and how the Soviet Union might be dead...

Why are so many minority patients rejecting the COVID vaccines and what can healthcare do about it? Vaccine hesitancy in minority communities is threatening to turn the pandemic into a specific crisis for marginalised and non-white populations. Ayesha Hazarika talks to Dr Salman Waqar , GP and General Secretary of the British Islamic Medical Association, about a problem with deep roots in the hist...

Just how global can Britain be if we’re becoming ever-more insular after Brexit? Naomi Smith talks to Peter Westmacott , former ambassador to Turkey, France and the USA, about the hidden prejudices that influence international relations, whether the advent of Biden will turn back the tide of populist nationalism, and his new book They Call It Diplomacy .  “A French colleague once asked me point-bl...

Would you get get a vaccine passport if it meant you could go out to eat, drink and dance? Even if it created a two-tier Britain? Special guest Alan Rusbridger joins us to talk about his new book News And How To Use It , the crisis in journalism and how we fix it. And Frasier is coming back. Is this a good idea? Hardcore fangirl Yasmeen has thoughts.  “Journalism is as essential as ambulances or t...

Will Wednesday’s Budget see the end of Sunshine Sunak or will the Chancellor put off the reckoning with financial Armageddon again? How will you spend the last week of home schooling? And what about that new Brazilian variant? Arthur Snell sets out the coming week for Andrew Harrison. “Margaret Thatcher is the divinity all the old Tories worship, but this party’s agenda couldn’t be further from he...

Bully, liar, tyrant, fantasist, thief on a monumental scale – just ask the Mirror pensioners – and narcissist of an even greater magnitude, Robert Maxwell was a villain for whom the term “disgraced newspaper tycoon” seems pitifully small. Yet as former Evening Standard and Telegraph journalist John Preston’s new book Fall: The Mystery Of Robert Maxwell shows, the horror of Maxwell’s early life exp...

After an initial COVID response that was lauded as an example to the world, Germany has experienced an unexpectedly harsh second wave. What will that mean for the twilight of the Merkel Era? Is Germany’s strange opposition coalition of libertarians, alt.rightists and anti-vaxxers just fringe politics or something more serious? And what comes after Merkel? The Economist’s Berlin bureau chief Tom Nu...

Was the Trump Presidency just a publicity stunt that got out of hand? Film-maker James Fletcher’s new documentary on the 2016 campaign The Accidental President is streaming now on Amazon and Apple TV . He talks to Dorian Lynskey about what fed the Black Swan event of the Trump presidency, how Trump’s freestyle campaign left his Republican rivals with nothing to say, and how it could be that – even...

Our 250th edition! In the Thatcher governments of the 80s Michael Heseltine was the loudest voice for embattled One Nation Toryism. In later years he’s become a hero to Remainers, eventually paying for his Europhilia with expulsion from the party. Ian Dunt talks to him about the future of Toryism, what it was like to work with Margaret Thatcher, what he makes of Keir Starmer… and whether circumsta...

As the Roadmap to Unlocking is unveiled, are Johnson’s plans over-cautious, reckless, unrealistic or maybe… reasonable? Special guest former Home Secretary David Blunkett joins us to explain what it’s like to make decisions in a crisis, what he thinks of Keir Starmer’s performance so far, and whether he rates Priti Patel. Plus, do we need a deradicalisation programme for angry white males? “If opp...

Will Boris Johnson’s “schools first” plan for unlocking England placate the headbangers of the CRG? What about those desperate for a beer that’s not from a can? Can Keir Starmer out-caution the PM? And what’s going on with Johnson’s latest wheeze, a subterranean roundabout under the Isle of Man? Ros Taylor sets up the week ahead.  “ This is bad news if you ’ re a pub landlord – and good news if yo...

After decades of feminist thought, why is history still a parade of men and the things they’ve done? The writers, poets and teachers behind the Twitter initiative @OnThisDayShe are putting women back into history, one day at a time – and they’re not leaving out the serial killers. Jo Bell , Tania Hershman and Ailsa Holland of @OnThisDayShe talk to Jude Rogers about why history leaves women out, th...

What does it mean to be indispensable? From Major through New Labour to the Coalition, the late Civil Service giant Jeremy Heywood was to a key advisor to four Prime Ministers, and Cabinet Secretary to two. Theresa May described him as “the greatest public servant of our age”. His widow Suzanne tells Ros Taylor about her new book What Does Jeremy Think? , what it took for Jeremy Heywood to manage...

From the ownership of Manchester City and Paris St. Germain to motor sport in the Middle East to the Beijing Olympics, questionable regimes are laundering their reputations by association with elite sport. Does “ sportswashing ” work, and what can fans do about it? Murad Ahmed , Sports Editor of the FT and host of their Business of Football Summit , gives Andrew Harrison the inside track on sport’...

Britain’s COVID policy has failed women so badly that organisations from Amnesty to the Fawcett Society have called for the EHRC to intervene. Why can’t our blokey-bloke Cabinet understand that more than half the population is being hit harder by the virus – and getting less help? Plus special guest Caroline Lucas MP explains the radical, cross-party Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill. And as S...

As enforced hotel quarantine kicks in, will closed borders mollify the increasingly restive Covid Recovery Group? And brace yourself for an entirely unnecessary War on Woke as the Government invents the Free Speech Champion – the worst superhero ever. Ian Dunt sets out the coming week for Andrew Harrison. “You’d imagine that closed borders and quarantine would be exactly what the CRG want.” “We wo...

When opposition figurehead and recovered Novichok target Alexei Navalny flew back to Russia to lead democracy protests, he took an enormous personal risk, of which instant imprisonment was only a part. Could Navalny’s mix of street demos and slick social media mockery really destabilise Putin’s regime? Luke Harding , author of Shadow State : Murder, Mayhem and Russia's Remaking of the West , expla...

The American writer George Saunders won the 2017 Booker Prize with Lincoln In The Bardo and is an award-winning author of short stories. His new book A Swim In A Pond In The Rain explains how short stories work with the aid of Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Dorian Lynskey is a fan. George Saunders talks to Dorian about his “shovel in the fictive graveyard”, being a working class writer in a middl...

Even after the horror of the Grenfell Fire, millions of people are still living in homes with cheap, inflammable cladding – and the effort to fix it has stalled. Steve Cole , head of corporate strategy at the housing association Clarion, and Inside Housing ’s award-winning editor Peter Apps tell Naomi Smith about a scandal that’s been inexcusably neglected, how austerity paved the way for this tra...

Can Keir Starmer re-energise Labour by connecting it to the symbols its old voters admire? And why are progressives so neurotic about patriotism? Plus, with Russia and China distributing Sputnik and Sinovac around the world, are COVID vaccines a surprisingly hard tool of soft power? And why is supposedly ‘Global’ Britain giving up on learning foreign languages? Ahir Shah , Yasmeen Serhan and Arthu...

What to watch out for in the next seven days: Trumpeachment II and the Republicans’ Faustian bargain with their own fantasists, worsening import-export crisis in Britain’s Brexit-battered ports, Labour exposes the Government’s crony contracts and more. Alex Andreou marks your card for the week ahead.  “ The in and out valves to this country are jammed.” “ Haulage is not a curve, it ’ s a tipping p...

Are the rules that make powerful people powerful changing? Can they still bank on the old myth of the superhuman CEO or political leader? Business journalist from the Telegraph, Evening Standard and beyond James Ashton has just published The Nine Types Of Leader : How The Leaders Of Tomorrow Can Learn From The Leaders Of Today . He talks to Alex Andreou about how leadership is changing.   “ The pe...