Evening all, 

It’s Imogen here bringing you our weekend edition on a scorching day that was made even brighter by the news this morning of Andy Burnham’s seismic victory for Labour over Reform in the Makerfield byelection. Go Andy!

I will hand over shortly to the Nerve’s political commentator, Sangita Myska, to give her expert view on Makerfield and what comes next (as an aside, we loved Count Binface’s mention of Sangita in a Sky News interview last night). But first to say I do think we need to remember to take heart from these victories – to keep reminding ourselves that the rise of the far right, the takeover of the tech bros, is not inevitable, and that every one of us can make a difference in the fightback. 

To that end, I want to highlight a really special interview we have today with an inspirational figure for us all at the Nerve. Chris Smalls is the man who took on Amazon – and won. Chris went from being an Amazon warehouse employee to mobilising fellow staff against Jeff Bezos and setting up the very first Amazon labour union in the US, giving hope to millions of exploited workers. He hasn’t stopped there: last month he made headlines by crashing the Met Gala in a high-profile protest against the event's host, Bezos – a man who runs what is now a $2.6 trillion company and has a personal net worth of $250bn-plus, but refuses to negotiate basic rights with its warehouse workers. He spoke to the Nerve’s Lucia Osborne-Crowley about his remarkable story and his new memoir, When the Revolution Comes. It’s a really uplifting read. 

One of the things Chris talks about so beautifully is the power of community, of coming together to fight for a common cause. This chimes with Sangita’s key takeaway from the Makerfield byelection. She says: “It’ll take days if not weeks to interpret the ramifications of what Andy Burnham’s return to parliament means for the Labour party and the country as a whole; but what we already know is that the majority of people in Makerfield clearly understood what was at stake: keeping Reform out. The people showed up in force: the byelection turnout was 58.7%, compared with 52.5% at the 2024 general election. 

“Broadly speaking, voters across the spectrum of left-leaning parties understood the importance of tactical voting, while voters on the right didn’t. Evidence of this lies in a fascinating graph published by the polling company More in Common (below) that shows there’s been little movement between 2024 and 2026 in terms of the left and the right voting blocs; but it also shows that there was a concerted effort among Greens and Lib Dem voters to throw their weight behind Labour.  

“Of course, Andy Burnham’s personal popularity and proven track record as mayor of Manchester undoubtedly played a part in people’s decision-making, but keeping Reform out, in what most polls showed was going to be a close, two-horse race was, arguably, the decisive factor. By contrast, hard-right Reform and Restore voters couldn’t master the art of tactical voting. The bitter personal rivalry between Farage and Rupert Lowe played out at the ballot box – meaning the hard right vote was split. It strikes me the people of Makerfield have grasped what most politicians either haven’t or won’t: keeping Farage out of Downing Street needs a cross-party, progressive alliance.” 

Or as Chris Smalls told Lucia: “Our liberation is through fighting together, like our ancestors did.”

Before I get to the links to today’s reads, a reminder that tickets are on sale for our Nerve members’ screening and talk with the Oscar-nominated filmmaker, photographer, activist (and Nerve contributing editor) Misan Harriman about the new documentary following his work documenting global protest movements, Shoot the People. It’s on 7 July at the Rio cinema in Dalston, east London. We hope to see lots of you there!

And a reminder for free subscribers that upgrading to membership is a huge help to us, particularly when it comes to funding investigations such as our current one into political donor Christopher Harborne (part three published today). And please also click on the ad at the end of this newsletter for a piece from our partner Airmail, the US digital publication.

And here are today’s links:

“Some institutions think they can negotiate with Farage in good faith,” writes Stewart in his latest column. “You may as well try to negotiate with a haemorrhoid.” Nonetheless, he has discovered that two of Britain’s leading theatrical associations, “fearing for their funding”, are now urging their members to engage “warmly and professionally” with new Reform councillors across the country. Historically, culture has been the first line of defence against the far right, Stewart writes. In response to the rise of racial prejudice in the 1970s, punk-era activists formed Rock Against Racism in the 1970s – “they did not get together and concoct a document about how to make their work more palatable to fascists.” Read his excoriating column here.

In the latest part of our investigation into Reform’s biggest funder, we look at how the chief architect of Brexit fared in post-EU Britain – short of cash, out of politics, but becoming increasingly attracted to digital currencies. And we unearth the earliest known evidence of him shilling for crypto – a video promo for his newsletter he put out in December 2020. “Have you made any money?” he asks his interviewee, visibly gleeful when the answer is “yes”... Read Lucia Osborne-Crowley’s report and watch the video here.

Smalls is famous for standing up to Amazon – starting a campaign to unionise its workers in 2020 when he witnessed firsthand how employees were being exposed to Covid-19. In 2022, after a hard-fought vote, and despite endless attempts by Amazon to smear and discredit him, he formed the US's first Amazon Labour Union. In 2025, he sailed on one of the flotillas attempting to break Israel's illegal siege in Gaza. As Chris publishes his memoir When the Revolution Comes, he talks to the Nerve’s Lucia Osborne-Crowley about the fight against the billionaire class, and what it's like to live rent-free in Jeff Bezos's head. Read the interview here.

Today, two Ukrainians were sentenced for arson attacks targeting Keir Starmer. BBC’s Panorama recently revealed that one of the arsonists’ tutors was Sergey Nalobin – a Russian who has previously been accused of attempting to channel money into the Conservative party. If this sounds familiar, it was documented in the hit podcast series Sergei & the Westminster Spy Ring – presented by Peter Jukes and Nerve co-founder Carole Cadwalladr. The Sergei on the podcast title, Sergei Cristo, writes for the Nerve about how, until the political establishment fixes its blind spot about Russian interference in Westminster, the Brexit vote and British life – as documented in the 2020 Russia Report – the UK remains vulnerable to Putin’s influence and terror. Read his piece here

“With 1983’s Glengarry Glen Ross,” says Nerve theatre critic Dorian Lynskey, “David Mamet produced the greatest play ever written about men and their bullshit.” Dorian’s a huge fan of Mamet’s Pulitzer-winning work about a bunch of increasingly desperate real-estate salesmen (and the 1992 movie version, with its swaggering all-star cast including Al Pacino and Jack Lemmon) – so what would he make of director Patrick Marber’s all-female reimagining of the testosterone-soaked classic, led by Indira Varma (and Dorian’s personal favourite Rosa Salazar, whom he describes as a “volcanic event”)? Read Dorian’s brilliant review here.

The Italian-born food writer Ursula Ferrigno has chosen to focus on cuisine from the country’s Emilia-Romagna region, and its capital Bologna, for her latest cookbook, Cucina dell'Emilia-Romagna. “Here, people think, talk and fantasise about food more than anywhere else in the country,” she says. Today she’s sharing a super-quick and simple recipe for tortino di zucchine – one that’s great for entertaining and combines the sweetest courgettes of the season with two types of cheese to form a delicious, melt-in-your-mouth pie. Get the recipe here.

Thanks for reading - we’ll see you again on Tuesday. And don’t forget to click the ad for Airmail below!

Imogen

A small but vocal crew of amateur sleuths are intent on exposing what they describe as “the art world’s biggest cover-up”: the murder of Vincent van Gogh. Read the article for free today.

Read the article for free