Hello Nervers!

Jane here, bringing you our Tuesday edition which this week includes a deep dive into the finances of Reform, an update on our live events and our weekly unmissable culture hotlist. 

Today marks exactly 20 weeks since our launch in Liverpool  - and thanks to you we are thriving! We are so grateful to all our members who have signed up to support us and help us build a community. By total coincidence our Instagram (@the_nerve_news) also hit 20k followers today - and our Bluesky audience isn’t far behind. Thanks to everyone who is sharing our journalism and social posts. Please do keep it up and help us grow even more.

In case you missed Virginia Heffernan’s article on Friday, it is now our most-read article to date. Virginia investigated how Edge - Jeffrey Epstein’s favourite intellectual salon - made the names of ‘rockstar' writers, scientists and academics that dominated the media. In fact, it was a decades-long project cloaking eugenics, race science and sexual misconduct in Ivy League respectability. Read it here.

When we launched, one of the topics which we pledged to investigate is the Reform Party. So on the day that Nigel Farage announced his “shadow cabinet” - that’s Suella Braverman to Education and Robert Jenrick taking the Treasury brief - and with just nine days to go until the Gorton and Denton by-election - we look at their donor balance sheet and uncover a pattern of former Tory donors now lining the pockets of Reform.

Our researcher Charlie Young has spent weeks poring over records of who is donating what. He says: “I worked on this with a brilliant anonymous source who’d simply reached out online after noticing a funky pattern. Ever since, the two of us have been neck deep in Electoral Commission filings, trying to work out if Reform is in fact just three Tories in a trench coat.” 

A quick event update. Big thanks to Laura Poitras for joining us online after our plush, Netflix-sponsored members’ screening of her BAFTA-nominated documentary Cover-Up on Friday - and thanks for these kind words about the Nerve!

And we’re looking forward to Thursday when Carole will talk to the Turkish writer Ece Temelkuran in what is set to be a packed hall at the Anthony Burgess Foundation in Manchester. Congratulations to Ece on being longlisted for the prestigious Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction for her new book, A Nation of Strangers: Rebuilding Home in the 21st Century. The last few tickets are available here.

Our (heroically patient) researcher-reporter Charlie Young has been trawling through the electoral commission’s political donations database to find out exactly where Reform UK’s funding comes from. It’s painstaking, slow work, but he’s uncovered an extraordinary pattern - 80% of Reform’s declared funding since 2019 has come from donors who have previously given to the Tory party - including some of the Tories most generous funders. This fact has infuriated many of Reform’s former faithful who see the growing numbers of former Tories in the party - including recent high profile defectors Suella Braverman and Robert Jenrick – as proof of a Tory takeover that waters down what they perceive as Reform’s radical agenda. Read his report here.

It's the BAFTAs this Sunday and one of the contenders, The Secret Agent, has been on a winning streak since it premiered at Cannes 2025 where it was the festival's most awarded film (best director, best actor and more) and now it's finally out here on Friday. According to Nerve film critic Ellen E Jones, "Kleber Mendonça Filho’s voyage into the dark heart of Brazil’s 1970s military dictatorship...with Wagner Moura as an academic both fleeing persecution, and participating in the resistance" is absolutely worth the wait. Elsewhere in this week's pick of the best new culture, the Nerve team has two plays to recommend, a "total delight" of a free exhibition in Manchester, a wild literary debut, pop star Charli xcx following brat summer with "goth spring" and more. Get your hot tips here

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Jane, co-founder

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