Good evening, Nerve readers … and a warm welcome to the large number of you who signed up to the newsletter this week! 

It’s Jane here bringing you our weekend edition. Today, we have Natasha Walter on what the Met Gala reveals about the state of the world for women; investigative reporter Lucia Osborne-Crowley on the wellness industry’s disturbing new trend on social media; and neuroscientist Anil Seth on Richard Dawkins’s flirtation with Claude’s AI chatbot (aka “Claudia”). Plus there’s satire from Stewart Lee, cultural recommendations from comedian Rosie Jones and Nerve music critic Kate Hutchinson on Rosalía’s “jaw-dropping” live show.

But first to the UK’s local elections and to how the British political landscape has changed in the hours since the polls closed. I don’t know about your neighbourhood, but mine has seen the three Labour councillors swept aside by three Conservatives with the Tories seizing back control of the council. 

I’m no psephologist so this morning I turned to Sangita Myska, our new political commentator, for a snapshot of events at midday. She says:

“In an age of fractured politics, the full ramifications will take days to unfold – what we do know is that this is a bad day for Keir Starmer’s technocratic leadership, and a good day for Nigel Farage’s brand of divisive politics.

“So far the results show Labour has taken a hit in its traditional heartlands. It has lost control of nine councils, including Tameside, where Angela Rayner’s parliamentary constituency is located. By contrast, Reform has won control of three councils – notably Essex, where the Tory Leader Kemi Badenoch’s seat is situated. At a press conference this morning, Nigel Farage described the showing as “historic” while swatting away a reporter’s question about an undeclared £5m “gift” from his friend, the Thai-based crypto-billionaire Chris Harborne. As if further proof were needed, Farage’s Teflon coating, the thing that has inured him from scandal after scandal, remains intact.” 

Sangita adds: “The analysis of Reform’s impact on Labour by the election guru’s election guru, Professor Sir John Curtice, is, however, worth spending time on. While it’s true that Reform is making gains from Starmer’s party, a deeper analysis shows that it’s the ‘long tail of Brexit’ that is giving Reform its tailwind: in majority-Brexit voting areas, he says, support for Reform is running at about 50%. By contrast, in pro-Remain voting areas, Reform polls at under 10% – and it’s here that the Greens appear to be seeing big gains.” 

The full results should be in by tomorrow and you can look forward to a full assessment from Sangita on Tuesday.   

If you are new to the Nerve, you may have missed some of our recent investigations, such as this on the far right’s magic money tree or this on Farage’s plans to build a British ICE. 

The lack of scrutiny of Reform UK finances – that £5m Christopher Harborne donation, for instance, that Sangita mentioned – is disturbing and it’s this that led our columnist Stewart Lee to say that he wanted to do something a bit different with his column this week. He’d just seen Stephen Sharkey’s version of The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui for the RSC and it made him think sometimes “non-subtlety” is the way to go.

Thank you to all our paying members for your support, which is essential to fund our investigations. We will continue to look into the dark forces at work in our political system. If you are reading for free, do consider upgrading to paid membership here. And a final request: if you could click on our ad for secure email provider Proton at the end, it would help fund our work. 🙏

Here are the links to the rest of today’s edition:

Natasha Walter, the author of Feminism for a World on Fire, published by Virago this week, is an authoritative voice on women and inequality. Of Monday’s Met Gala, she says it was “an ostensible celebration of beauty that held a terrible ugliness in its heart”. But, she continues, “while once upon a time the poses in front of the Met of those women attending might have looked joyful, now they seem unmoored in this context where every talent, every idea, every personality, has been flattened by displays of gross excess and waste”. She highlights the shocking statistic that 22 wealthy men have more wealth than all the women in Africa and argues that we must fight to move away from a world of ever-deepening waste and inequality. Read her column here.

Natasha will be speaking with Nerve co-founder Carole Cadwalladr and writer Aja Barber on Wednesday (13 May) at London’s Conway Hall. We have secured a massive 40% subscribers discount: use the code FFWOF5946 at checkout. Then on Tuesday 19 May, she will be in conversation at Bristol’s Bookhaus. Members have been sent a reduced-price link.

Do you remember hearing something the other week about a secretive foreign-based billionaire making a donation – a very large one – to a British politician? Does that ring a bell? It wouldn’t be surprising if it didn’t, Stewart writes: barely anyone covered it, even though it’s the kind of story he can remember causing quite a stir when other politicians accepted much smaller sums. For all those, especially in other media organisations, who didn’t catch it, he’s offering a quick recap of the main points – as you’ll see. Read his column here

If you’re feeling tired, burnt out, stressed … then there’s probably a wellness influencer out there who wants to help you “reset your nervous system” for a fee. But don’t listen to them, writes our investigative reporter Lucia Osborne-Crowley: the growing trend for “vagus nerve stimulation” is only partially understood by scientists, never mind people on Instagram. What’s more, attempting to do it flirts with the possibility of serious consequences. As she writes: “While these exercises cannot create a ‘reset’, as advertised, they can create a reaction in the nervous system which can actually be very damaging when not handled by a professional.” Read her in-depth piece here

Richard Dawkins, acclaimed scientist and renowned sceptic, caused quite a stir last week when he spent three days with the Claude AI chatbot and emerged to declare it had achieved consciousness. But neuroscientist Anil Seth disagrees that “Claudia”, as Dawkins called her, is sentient – not least because, as Dawkins himself has shown, complex systems can be very deceptive. He writes: “We know we’re conscious and we like to think we’re intelligent, so we assume the two go together. But just because consciousness and intelligence go together in us, doesn’t mean they go together in general”. Read his piece here

This week it’s the comedian, actor and author Rosie Jones sharing her cultural highlights with us and it’s a real treat! You may know Rosie as the creator and star of Channel 4’s Bafta-nominated comedy-drama Pushers or for her many winning appearances on TV shows including Taskmaster and QI. Next she’s appearing with Nish Kumar in Every Joke is a Tiny Revolution at the Charleston festival on 22 May. Today she reveals her current TV crush, her favourite pub for pizza, also featuring a DJing landlady, the book that almost made her “want to get a job in a restaurant as a sexy chef” and more. Read Rosie’s Recommender here

“I am not religious, but I would repent for my sins every night if it meant getting to see Rosalía’s Lux tour again,” says Nerve music critic Kate Hutchinson of the extraordinary experience of watching the classically trained Catalan artist perform earlier this week. “For an album sung in 13 languages, blending experimental electronic beats with bombastic orchestral arrangements and inspired by a multifaith range of saints and mystics, the show was never going to be straightforward,” she writes – but she still wasn’t prepared for just how dazzled she was. Read Kate’s review here

It’s so brimful of delicious-looking dishes, from “matrimonial chicken” to green bean salad, that it was hard to pick just one recipe from Malaysian-born Ranie Saidi’s characterful debut cookbook, The Malay Cook, but we plumped for this super-quick fish dish to add some zing to your weekend. Ranie was raised in his grandmother’s kitchen and found comfort recreating her dishes after her death and his move to London. “What makes this steamed sea bass so special,” he says, “is the spices tempered in hot oil, poured over at the end – it wakes up the flavours.” Find the recipe here

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend. If you are enjoying the Nerve, please forward this newsletter to friends and colleagues. Don’t forget to click the ad below !

Jane

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