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Exclusive: JD Vance speaks to UnHerd on America's new relationship with Iran.
Speaking to @SohrabAhmari on Air Force Two, he covered:
- What it's like to negotiate with the Iranians
- What Iran really wants from the deal
- How America and Iran have agreed an in-person channel between the IRGC and CENTCOM
unherd.com/2026/06/jd-vance-…
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Labour’s war on gay rights, by Andrew Doyle (@andrewdoyle_com)
Homosexuality is not the only factor that can lead to confusion over ‘gender’.
In her book ‘Time to Think’, journalist Hannah Barnes outlined in meticulous detail how the vast majority of children referred to GIDS for gender-related distress also presented with a range of other difficulties, including depression, self-harm, anxiety, histories of abuse and dysfunctional families.
Roughly a third of patients were suffering from an Autistic Spectrum Disorder (ASD) as compared to only 2% of the country as a whole.
Read more ⬇️
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This week, a top literary prize was won by a writer accused of using AI.
Read @BarneysRubble0 on how the technology is eroding creativity 👇
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Why Burnhamomics will fail, by Wolfgang Munchau (@EuroBriefing)
If Andy Burnham and his next chancellor were to scrap Britain’s fiscal framework, the bond market vigilantes would have every incentive to attack.
Jim O’Neill, a former Goldman Sachs chief economist and now an adviser to Burnham, has reportedly came out in favour of a German-style multi-annual public investment fund. To make his idea palatable to the bond markets,
O’Neill has suggested that the UK get rid of the pensions triple lock. I don’t think this’ll impress the vigilantes unless and until Burnham actually started freezing pensions — and that’s before you factor in the political challenges.
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The euthanasia of the West, an exclusive essay by Michel Houellebecq
It is said that when Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilisation, he paused for a few seconds before replying: ‘I think it would be a very good idea.’ It was an amusing response even if it was a bit unfair. There was once such a thing as Western civilisation; but the fact is, it is more or less behind us now. To speak of ‘civilisation’ in the context of modern Europe is to hide behind a fancy word. Deep down we all know it, even if it’s hard to admit: the game is up.
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UnHerd retweeted
Beer, hot dogs and Donald Trump: this is a fascinating essay from @DreValentino on what America owes to its early German settlers.
unherd.com/2026/07/how-germa…
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‘The more monstrous the crime, the more leverage the inmate perversely acquires.’
Vickrum Digwa has exposed the frailty of British prisons, writes @mrdavematthews 👇 buff.ly/stDl9iD
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How Germans made America, by Andrea Valentino (@DreValentino)
Unlike the Irish or Italians — destitute, illiterate, condemned to years in rat-hole tenements — German Americans were generally richer and more educated.
Most were farmers, dodging the East Coast slums and travelling west with the republic, founding towns like Oldenburg, Indiana, and Dutzow, Missouri, and Germantowns almost everywhere.
Like many of their countrymen, my wife’s family chose the rich soil of Wisconsin, but an ethnic map of the nation today shows a German plurality stretching across a dozen states and 1,000 heartland counties, an unbroken chain from Philadelphia to Oregon.
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Michel Houellebecq, France’s most celebrated living novelist, has devoted his career to chronicling the spiritual exhaustion of the West and the crises of modernity.
Now, as France prepares to vote on whether to legalise euthanasia, he delivers an impassioned plea for life exclusively for UnHerd. Assisted dying, he argues, marks the moral apotheosis of a species apparently set on its own destruction.
‘It is true that I have devoted myself to examining the symptoms of the suicide of the West and the rise of nihilism,’ he writes. ‘But I do not recall ever having rejoiced in any of it.’
Read more ⬇️
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Vickrum Digwa, who murdered Henry Nowak, is refusing to move to a different prison wing out of fear that other inmates will attack him.
The carceral system is outsourcing retributive justice to criminals, writes @mrdavematthews 👇 buff.ly/stDl9iD
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L’euthanasie de l’Occident, un essai exclusif de Michel Houellebecq
On raconte que Gandhi, interrogé sur ce qu’il pensait de la civilisation occidentale, aurait répondu après quelques secondes : « Ça pourrait être une bonne idée ».
C’est drôle et quand même injuste, il y a eu une civilisation occidentale ; mais le fait est qu’elle est plutôt derrière nous.
Parler de « civilisation » pour désigner l’état des choses en Europe donne l’impression qu’on se gargarise d’un grand mot. On le sent bien au fond, même si se l’avouer demeure difficile, c’est plié.
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AI and the false consciousness trap, by Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis)
The message for the rest of society is simple. Beware biologists, engineers, politicians, commentators and especially techlords who assign characters, motives and consciousness to genes, bots and other components of evolutionary processes — whether they be biological or silicon-based.
Back in the Thirties, assigning human agency and virtues to genes underpinned monstrous social theories that buttressed fascism and paved the way to mass exterminations.
Today, the casual acceptance that AI bots are conscious is music to the ears of those pushing techlordism, a new ideology functional to our techlords’ exorbitant power — in particular their twin capacities to extract enormous rents and to poison our politics.
Read more ⬇️
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Kamala Harris has been courting the Democratic Party’s increasingly radical base ahead of a possible 2028 bid.
Yet her record on Gaza will sink her campaign before it begins, writes @emilyjashinsky 👇 buff.ly/58wPTOB
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‘Kamala Harris knows the obvious: she has no political future in an increasingly radical Democratic Party without a dramatic reckoning.’
@emilyjashinsky 👇 buff.ly/58wPTOB
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This week, after 89 years in business, Coughlans Bakery closed its doors.
The move points to a broader decline of the high street, writes Jack Burke 👇
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UnHerd retweeted
Perhaps Andy Burnham doesn’t mean to trash Britain’s prospects as an AI-powered economy.
In which case, he needs a chat with the Debbie Downers on his team.
From me for @UnHerd: unherd.com/newsroom/andy-bur…
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‘Walk down any British high street, and you’ll find the same grim characters standing where a hundred different independent businesses used to be.’
Read Jack Burke 👇
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Britain has the third-biggest AI market in the world.
But an Andy Burnham premiership could drag us down the rankings, writes @peterfranklin_ 👇
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UnHerd retweeted
over at @unherd , I've got a new piece about how the "based right" have speedrun the process of headlining the "cruel kids table" per NY Mag to becoming (in many cases) crybullying, easily aggrieved jokescolds themselves unherd.com/newsroom/birthrig…
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Andy Burnham reportedly wants to revamp Britain’s AI strategy by moving away from American technology.
But is the PM-in-waiting sacrificing future growth? Read @peterfranklin_ 👇
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UnHerd retweeted
"What appears to have been overlooked, though, is the way in which the Southport atrocity relates to questions of immigration and integration in Britain."
My latest @unherd.
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