The Bunker – News without the nonsense

NEW: A daily Bunker mini-cast for the duration of the lock-in, and maybe beyond. On today’s debut edition, the emergency Corona Bill changes our rights in ways unthinkable in normal times, with extra ministerial powers, suspension of protections for mental health patients and “huge, swingeing powers” for police to disperse gatherings and detain people for testing. Ros Taylor talks to human rights...

How’s your lockdown? What tipped Johnson and Cummings over the edge from “herd immunity” to total shutdown? Why is the Government that spent £100m on Brexit adverts not committing a penny to public health advertising on social media? And what is Rishi Sunak going to do now he’s Prime Minister? Plus, is Corona the unexpected reset moment we needed on climate change ? Campaigner Natalie Fee has thou...

LO-FI REMOTE RECORDING, completed right before Sunak’s £330bn announcement…  Corona bites harder. Can Boris Johnson persuade us to trust the science after so many years of telling us not to trust experts? What’s more likely to motivate people to self-isolate: a sense of duty or outright fear? Should the British government’s go-it-alone approach provoke confidence? And have we inadvertently trained...

If Keir Starmer’s victory is a done deal, what battlegrounds should Labour’s new leader choose? Standard/Buzzfeed/Telegraph journo Marie le Conte and former Labour MEP Rory Palmer debate the future of Starmerism. Plus Marie explains what the hell’s happening in France – and the don of football writing Philippe Auclair explains why despite a frenzy of busts and exposés, world football’s corruption...

Wily virus comes in like a wrecking ball… Are poor leadership and bad information hampering the UK and US fight against the Coronavirus ? Bernie, Biden, or Bloomberg on Super Tuesday . To beat Trump do you need someone as crazy as, well, Trump? Or will any shouty billionaire do? Priti Patel ’s nasty regime. And was South Park the Nirvana to the alt.right’s Nickelback? Self-isolating in The Bunker...

With Dom’n’Priti at the controls, is Britain’s failing justice system ready to be reformed within an inch of its life? Inside points-based immigration for the world’s unemployed Mandarin-speaking violinists. And with Starmer on course to lead Labour, we play Shadow Cabinet Fantasy Football to predict who’ll make the team – and who’s leaving on a free.  Oh, and we have some exciting news from the l...

“Here are we living in a tin can…” If NIMBY helped create Britain’s housing nightmare , is YIMBY the answer? We talk to the grassroots disrupters who are trying to turn Britain’s development-phobia on its head with the battlecry “yes in my backyard.”  Plus: the Democrat Primaries . Is the party about to make the same mistake as Labour and nominate a kindly old grandpa who just can’t get the votes?...

As Michael Gove dumps the frictionless trade we were promised into the memory hole, will good old-fashioned belligerence get the Government the EU commerce settlement it wants? And what DOES it want anyway? Trade expert Dmitry Grozoubinski explains it all.  Plus, Cath Haddon of the Institute for Government on Classic Dom’s preparations to reform the British Constitution (with an axe?). And why doe...

This week on the Brexit-free podcast from the makers of Remainiacs… What are Baby Boomers so angry about? And will they always hoard the lion’s share of political power? Vladimir Putin, Original Populist : how he remade Western democracies in his own image. Marie Stopes sends her poetry to Hitler. And when is it right to deprive someone of the most sacred right of all: a Twitter account? Crammed i...

Welcome to THE BUNKER , the new weekly politics podcast from the makers of Remainiacs. This week we’re joined by former Obama homeland security advisor Amy Pope to discuss the Trump Impeachment latest and the suddenly pivotal role of “Evil Ned Flanders” John Bolton. Plus: If Keir Starmer wins the Labour leadership, will his first big fight be with Boris Johnson or with Continuity Corbynism? And ca...