UnHerd

Challenging the herd with bold thinking in philosophy, politics and culture.

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[UnHerd @unherd]

How David Miliband failed upwards, by Ian Birrell (@ianbirrell)

David Miliband is on manoeuvres. Westminster’s lobby stenographers have been busy quoting ‘friends’ on his readiness to serve in the Cabinet if offered a top job, backed up by a barrage of claims that Andy Burnham is lining him up for a return to frontline politics as foreign secretary. Reports suggest that such an appointment, bringing back a trusted political operator with contacts and experience, would free the incoming prime minister to focus on domestic issues.

The drumbeat grew louder last week, with breathless reports that the veteran New Labour figure, who has spent more than a decade in the United States running a refugee charity, was preparing to ‘break his silence’ with a landmark speech. And then — surprise, surprise — this key acolyte of Tony Blair used the Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks memorial lecture at the London School of Economics to reveal that he was actually a Burnham fanboy.

Read more ⬇️ https://t.co/GNXgVpRmS7

[Stella O'Malley @stellaomalley3]

I wrote this latest for @unherd about the rise in violent sexual offences. The grim joylessness of the sexual awakening for many teenagers today is very depressing

https://t.co/UK416Xe4we

[UnHerd @unherd]

This week, Gemini Trains announced it would be running a train from London to Cologne to rival Eurostar.

Are Britain’s railways returning to their former glory? Jonathan Glancey👇
https://t.co/2aEeOhvjp3

[Sohrab Ahmari 🇺🇸 @SohrabAhmari]

Michael Lind has written the best account I've ever read of what he calls the "The Tangle" of modern life:

the reason you need a passcode to access everything from health care to your TV, and then have to call five Indians to make it all work. https://t.co/DWtGBb9OOd

[Sohrab Ahmari 🇺🇸 @SohrabAhmari]

"Soon I was routed successively to four individuals with South Asian accents who struggled to speak British-inflected English. One after another passed me on to a colleague. The fifth call-center operator, calling me 'Sir Michael' instead of 'Mr. Lind.' "

https://t.co/ToyZv2EQ9P

[UnHerd @unherd]

“The Tangle of passcodes, illiterate customer service agents with thick Indian accents, and disjointed services that don't talk to each other is the unplanned, unintended result of the outsourcing of former in-house functions.”

Michael LIND

https://t.co/mO962bsvSU

[UnHerd @unherd]

‘Mainstream porn today depicts aggression, domination, humiliation, coercion and strangulation as ordinary features of sex.’

Is it any wonder sexual offences committed by under-18s are on the rise? @stellaomalley3 👇
https://t.co/KJ3zSbkkeW

[David James @drdavidajames]

New, by me, in @UnHerd: Moving exams online betrays working-class pupils https://t.co/cxhmoIKtHo

[UnHerd @unherd]

New police data shows arrests of children for sexual offences rose by almost 20% in 2024-25.

The increase is down to the influx of violent porn on social media, writes @stellaomalley3 👇
https://t.co/KJ3zSbkkeW

[UnHerd @unherd]

Why true crime isn’t real, writes Kat Rosenfield (@katrosenfield)

As a writer of murder mysteries, I often joke that making these stories believable requires making them profoundly unrealistic — simply because actual crimes and the investigation thereof have a way of being offensively uninspired.

Readers want complex murder plots, twisted motives, a tough and passionate detective in dogged pursuit of a killer who is as brilliant as he is depraved. They do not want acts of impulsive violence committed by a guy with a room temperature IQ, one whose misdeeds are the product not of months of detail-oriented planning and plotting, but a single inauspicious moment in which he had a) a really bad idea and b) access to a gun.

Read more ⬇️

https://t.co/EnWpNf1qrp

[UnHerd @unherd]

England’s blind hope, by Simon Critchley (@CritchleyUpdate)

England have a long and distinguished record of contriving to lose to Argentina in the end, and there is a certain grim solidarity to be had in it — the solidarity of the funeral. As Prometheus tells the chorus, chained to his rock, the one gift he gave to mortals was to stop them foreseeing their doom: “I sowed in them blind hopes.”

That is the 90-minute anxiety dream — you are trapped, you can see exactly what is coming, and it comes anyway — and it is the tournament’s last and best revelation about the tribe. What binds us is not the certainty of glory but the blind, renewable, faintly ridiculous hope we hold in common.

Read more below ⬇️

https://t.co/reyx8E3Ywc

[UnHerd @unherd]

The mood in Clacton's Wetherspoons, by Felix Pope (@felixpope_)

This is the end of the line for white flight. You cannot move further east than Clacton-on-Sea. You cannot move anywhere poorer than Jaywick. For those who seek greater ethnic homogeneity, there is only one other option left: to fight.

That makes the Clacton by-election essentially meaningless. It is a circus. Farage is almost certain to win, risking only mockery in his campaign against Count Binface.

What is more significant is the rage pulsating throughout this town, this country. That will remain, and it will decide our future. All-our-yesterdays Britain will have its revenge.

Read more ⬇️

https://t.co/2EP5cnLZcn

[UnHerd @unherd]

‘Before we abandon an examination system whose strengths are simplicity, reliability and fairness, we should be certain that any replacement is demonstrably better.’

Read @drdavidajames on the case against online tasting 👇
https://t.co/eNTpKUmBEA

[UnHerd @unherd]

Argentina: World Cup villains, by Nick Burns (@NickBurns)

Right-wing officials and the Peronist opposition jockey to see who can cheer the boys on louder, and no one has a second thought about donning the white and light blue.

Countless Argentines who don’t share the views of Right-wing streamers see no reason why they should be associated with them. They want to bring home a fourth trophy, to suffer and celebrate as one. To be loved by your own is to disdain what the rest of the world thinks.

Read more below ⬇️

https://t.co/syo9Hu7AnK

[UnHerd @unherd]

The head of Britain’s largest exam board is pushing for more testing to be conducted online.

But this would only increase disadvantages for poorer pupils, argues @drdavidajames 👇
https://t.co/eNTpKUmBEA

[Sohrab Ahmari 🇺🇸 @SohrabAhmari]

How passwords stole my sanity

You must read this piece by Michael Lind, about the roots of the constant inconvenience of digital life: how you need passcode to access everything from medical to your TV.

https://t.co/DWtGBb9OOd

[Daniel Kalder @DanielKalder]

Given that rock criticism is the worst form of writing to have emerged since the invention of cuneiform, why should anybody care about obsolete taboos imposed by practitioners of the form? The case for prog rock — my latest for @unherd
https://t.co/xnWWm4OvQc

[UnHerd @unherd]

‘It may already be too late to save Europe’s car industry in its present form, but decisions need to be made now.’

Read @MiquelVilam 👇
https://t.co/m9iidQLJxU

[Finlay McLaren @fin_lay24]

Here's me for @unherd on the murder of Ann Widdecombe and the establishment's bête noire: social media.

https://t.co/J1IZWQhgWv

[Sally Chatterton @Chattysalerton]

'We are entering a world in which it will be easier to die. I would have preferred a world in which it was possible to live.'

As France approves its assisted-dying bill, read Michel Houellebecq in @unherd

https://t.co/eZr4Tq7XCU

[UnHerd @unherd]

New figures show that China exported over one million cars in June.

European leaders are taking a backseat while Beijing dominates the industry, writes @MiquelVilam 👇
https://t.co/m9iidQLJxU