BoomersDominic CummingsJoe Bidenkemi badenochSuella Bravermanundercurrents

Latest from the Newsroom

16:15

La liste ‘Britishcore’ du Guardian capture le déclin impérial du Royaume-Uni

16:15

Guardian ‘Britishcore’ list captures UK’s imperial decline

13:00

Les lois sur la désinformation de Gavin Newsom risquent d’entraîner plus de censure
July 10, 2024 - 7:00pm

→ Braverman and Badenoch do battle on Tory Right

The knives are out. Not even a full week on from defeat at the polls and the fight for leadership of the Conservative Party is getting vicious. Suella Braverman has now responded to Kemi Badenoch’s leaked claim at yesterday’s Shadow Cabinet meeting that the former home secretary was undergoing a “very public” nervous breakdown.

In response to the leak, Badenoch said: “If there is no private space to discuss our Party’s challenges, we will never fully address what the electorate told us last week.” This afternoon, however, Braverman broke her short-lived silence on the matter.

She went on: “Kemi, and the rest of the cabinet, should not have nodded along, as they and Rishi took the party to disaster.” After Braverman bashed the Tory “liberals” whom she blames for the party’s defeat, unity seems less likely in Opposition than it did in government. If that’s even possible… 

→ Only Boomers back Biden now

A strong plurality of Democrats believe Joe Biden should not be the party’s nominee this year, with a notable exception: voters aged 65 and up. While 47% of the party believes the President should “definitely” or “probably” exit the race, only 26% of the senior cohort feel this way according to a new YouGov poll. In contrast, 58% of Democrats aged 18-29 want Biden out.

Ex-speaker Nancy Pelosi has made it abundantly clear that she wants the President to stand down, but she’s so far refused to say so directly — perhaps because of the optics, given that she herself is 84. Rep. Maxine Waters, 85, has also predictably come to Biden’s defence.

All this is hardly new. Ruth Bader Ginsberg famously refused to retire in her 80s under a Democratic administration, and her death under Donald Trump led to the current 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court. The Democratic Party has clearly learnt few lessons in response. Here’s to 20 more years of Boomer hegemony. 

→ Dominic Cummings chases new career as podcast bro

What’s a former adviser to the prime minister to do? Dominic Cummings has been out of Government since 2020 and has spent much of that time analysing Bismarck and Russian literature. But now he seems to be getting into an altogether different world. Chris Williamson, who hosts the Modern Wisdom podcast (and previously had a career in nightclub promotion and appeared on reality TV show Love Island), has secured Boris’s former right-hand man for an in-depth interview.

Last November, Cummings appeared for two and a half hours on tech podcaster Dwarkesh Patel’s show, during which he discussed Bismarck, among other things. No doubt Joe Rogan’s next. If he’s not careful, there will be no time left for his Startup Party…