Hi all,

It’s Sarah here bringing you our packed Tuesday edition including a blistering polemic on the war-mongering broligarchy by our co-founder Carole, our weekly culture hotlist which includes the best solo album yet from Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon and architecture writer Phin Harper on why we need more plumbers in the House of Commons. Plus a vital bit of context on the Iran war from the academic and journalist Martin Bright. All the links are at the end of this newsletter.

In our Monday Nerve editorial meeting we tend to start by discussing what news and analysis has caught our attention over the weekend and yesterday one of our main topics was the dismal way in which the right wing press and online commentariat has lined up to lionise Tony Blair for a (leaked) comment he made saying - essentially - that Starmer should have backed Britain’s “ally” Trump, no questions asked, in his illegal war on Iran.

We’ve been here before. For the Nerve team who worked on the Observer for the best part of two decades, this of course immediately brings to mind one of the most regrettable moments in the newspaper’s history - when it fell in line with the New Labour spin campaign and backed Britain joining the American invasion of Iraq, with only the thinnest legal justification for the war based on the dossier that claimed nd was later proved false - that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

Just two weeks before the invasion began, Martin Bright was part of the Observer reporting team which exposed the so-called ‘Dirty Tricks’ memo which showed the government was manoeuvring with the US to spy on UN delegates to win the PR argument for war (a very good film - Official Secrets - was made based on Martin’s reporting). As Martin says of our present moment - all this jingoism in the press when 70% of the public do not back military action - simply proves “the dodgy dossier generation is at it again”.  Read Martin’s piece here.

What’s even more extraordinary is that this time around the pro-war brigade are suggesting we team up with the most dangerous, unpredictable and deranged leader of modern times, backed by technology we do not properly understand. Look at this comment Trump made at a press conference yesterday. Is this really a man Starmer should embark on illegal war with?

Watching events unfold in the middle east, it can be difficult to know how to find positive ways forward. One way is to find solidarity in the views of others. Our co-founder Carole published her latest Substack newsletter yesterday evening - an excoriating cri du coeur that summarises how the globe is at the mercy of the testosterone-fuelled broligarchy - and it moved me to tears. We are publishing an edited version on the Nerve today (link below). I also loved the practical advice contained in Tim Snyder and Ruth Ben-Ghiat’s fascinating discussion about history’s lessons on Iran. Another is to take collective action: the Together Alliance march in London on 28 March is shaping up to be a major event “in response to the dangerous rise of racist and fascist ideas and politics across the UK”. I’ve signed up!

Here are the rest of this week’s reads. See you again on Friday.

The US government’s social media feeds have been “A hyper-masculine meme-ified fantasy of war,” writes Carole Cadwalladr. “But there’s another even more dangerous fantasy at play, because this is a war being waged with a new generation of AI-guided missiles. Gaza was the laboratory, this is the next stage… US military is using the “Maven Smart System” built by Peter Thiel’s Palantir and powered by Anthropic’s Claude to profile and select kill targets.” Read the rest of Carole’s powerful piece here on “the warped toxic pseudo-masculinity” that lies behind Trump’s war, the Epstein files and Dominique Pelicot.

Last month's byelection victory in Gorton and Denton by the Greens’ Hannah Spencer, a plumber and plasterer was historic for many reasons. For one she is now the highest profile person from the building industry in Parliament. “From the housing crisis to climate breakdown, and high speed rail infrastructure…construction is deeply entwined with almost every major strategic challenge facing Britain,” writes the architectural critic Phineas Harper. So why has Hannah’s election been largely ignored by that sector’s media? Is it class snobbery? Sexism? Read Phin’s column here.

Female voices take centre stage in this week’s hotlist, from American rocker Kim Gordon’s sensational new album, Play Me, to an exceptional debut novel by Helen Bain, The Daffodil Days, which centres upon the life of poet Sylvia Plath in the 15 months she spent with her husband, Ted Hughes, in a small town in Devonshire in the 1960s, as seen through the eyes of the townsfolk. There’s also a steamy Rachel Weisz TV drama, an uplifting film, a great (and free!) exhibition in Liverpool and Louis Theroux’s excellent Netflix debut in which he goes and hangs with some of the key players in the manosphere (aka “guys who have made bench-pressing in Mallorca their personality” as our editorial assistant Michaela Makusha puts it!). Read the hotlist here

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Sarah, co-founder