June Diary

Hello,

Obligatory shilling. This month I wrote at THE ZONE about my friend the jackdaw, factory farming, Polish pro wrestling, Dave Rubin, walking in Silesia, woke racism, Morrissey, Tony Hinchcliffe, third worldism and murderous fandoms.

I wrote for The Critic about gang culture, Henry Nowak, Russophiles, cuckooing, epistemic snobbery, grooming gangs, AI podcasts, Keir Starmer, viral Reddit posts, Steve Bray, Ben Stokes and aspiring spree killers.

For The American Conservative, I reviewed a documentary about the life and career of Hulk Hogan.

Spiritually Northern. In all likelihood, the next British PM will be Andy Burnham. He’s Northern. Have you heard that’s Northern? Well, he’ll tell you that he’s Northern. Then he’ll tell you again.

“Northern”, in a British context, implies a certain authenticity. Southern Softies are all about oat lattes and Westminster snobbery, but Northerners know what real life is like. I was raised in Bath, which is as soft and as southern as it gets, but my grandparents are proud Lancastrians. (Richard Ashcroft appears to be a distant relative.)

Granny and Grandad have maintained their Lancastrian accents throughout decades of living in South England. They still make affectionate references to chip butties and to “slutch” (a combination of wet snow and mud which I imagine carpeted Lancashire in the past). I can’t imagine them being at all pleased to be mistaken for Yorkshire folk.

That’s what’s a bit sad about the discourse around Burnham’s Northernness. Local culture has eroded in the UK to such an extent that “the North” can be framed as one place. Has no one heard of the War of the Roses?

In hot water. I hope all my followers have made it through the unprecedented heatwave that has been travelling across Europe. On the hottest day I’ve ever known in Poland, I was at another Prime Time Wrestling event. Wrestling, sun and cold beer is among the best combinations of things I can imagine for a Saturday afternoon. Alas, the heat made it just a bit too easy to drink the aforementioned cold beer. Needless to say, next morning it was very easy to obey official advice to remain indoors.

A load of Boll’s. Uwe Boll’s Citizen Vigilante, which depicts a ruthless former US Army officer imposing Dirty Harry-style justice on migrant criminals in Europe, has been causing controversy. I’ve seen some clips and it looks like absolute bollocks — leaden dialogue, farcical action scenes, and a performance from Armie Hammer that reeks of embarrassment. When a line of armed police officers shuffled out to face Hammer’s “Michael Sanders” and his brace of machine guns, it looked so OTT that it reminded me of how horror authors like Edward Lee took fictional violence to the heights of obscene comic farce.

No, I don’t think it should be banned. But it speaks to a rather sad tendency among online right-wingers — generally American — to use the pain of women and girls to justify adolescent imaginings. Why is Elon Musk posting about “traitors” when he could have backed a genuinely professional investigation into grooming gangs? It would not have been such fun.

The snitching hour. The rapper TY appeared to have become a rare drill rap success story when he became an improbable but popular online zoologist. He was even profiled on Sky News. Alas, it isn’t easy to put gang life behind oneself. TY ended up being arrested, along with a co-defendant, for murdering Steven Morrison in 2020. Now, Chris Summers of Total Crime brings news that TY has been acquitted after testifying against his co-defendant. Well, I can’t blame him. The code of the streets is not a useful basis for civilisation. But young men liable to be drawn into gang life should be aware that if they ever want to escape decades in prison, they might have no choice but to become what they claim to hate the most.

From the desk. This month I finished the first draft of a very short book and the first draft of a very short play. I’m a bit nervous about revisiting them, in case they are shit, but I’m glad to be experimenting with my work. The fact is that I can’t bang on about how we have to be more innovative and creative in the face of AI while only writing neat little opinion columns.

Rewatching the English. Onto some reading. Fred Sculthorp reflects on Englishness:

I’m not entirely sure I always recognise her subject of study. Reading this book in 2026 can sometimes feel like watching a family film of a once beloved relative who now has increasingly violent dementia.

The thinness of red tape. Chris Bayliss considers the regulatory state:

The regulators and price cappers have no responsibility under the legislation to ensure that the service itself is provided; merely to ensure that if it is done, it is only done within certain parameters. It is not hard to see how this ends up as a war of attrition, pitting the best against the good — a country without a reliable ambulance service, in which it is still considered intolerable for the most basic assistance to be provided by a person without the right training.

Peace and streets. Ed West ponders the social order:

If the government wishes to reduce the risk of further riots, it might focus less on social media and more on a criminal justice system that allows repeat offenders their freedom. The disconnect between the way the British state regards political offences, and the way it treats ordinary crime, has become vast, and characteristic of authoritarian regimes whose primary purpose is self-preservation.

The roots of Carlsonism. Franz Pokorny considers Tucker Carlson:

The roux in this multicultural slosh was politics, and nothing mixed the juices together like antisemitism. Where once ‘the socialism of fools’ forged bonds of unlikely solidarity between ethnic artisans and German clerks, today the Palestinian cause stitches together an equally awkward patchwork of metropolitan liberals and Mirpuri patriarchs, while in the youthful underbelly of America’s conservative movement, something closer to the old Viennese antisemitic coalition is taking shape.

Sex wars, what are they good for? Felice Basbøll writes in praise of inter-sex rhetorical disputation:

Mailer might have had a patronising tone, but he respected the female intellect enough to give the “ladies” a piece of his mind. The only thing worse than someone proving you wrong is someone not respecting you enough to try. All we can ask for is some intellectual honesty — as Mailer and Greer prove, the sexual tension will come naturally.

Have a lovely month!

Ben