A Weak Week
Cuts through the week's noise.
In this week's newsletter: Jude Jones, editor-in-chief of GAY45, cuts through the week's noise exclusively for subscribers, plus our essential recommendations.
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A Weak Week
By Jude Jones, editor-in-chief
British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is on his last legs -- and the rest have been kicked from beneath him by gay men. Of course, that is a polemic exaggeration: Sir Keir has been the architect of his own demise more than anybody else. A dearth of charisma mixed with neoliberal complacency and an insatiable desire to keep the trans-Atlantic alliance alive, even if it meant appointing Epstein aficionado and self-proclaimed Dark Prince Peter Mandelson to high political echelons, never made an easy cocktail.
However, gay men are now dominating the British political space. Outside of Mandelson and his black sway over British political life -- the gay former cabinet man is currently under investigation by the EU over the fraudulent exchange of trade secrets with Epstein’s inner circle -- while Keir’s likely usurper and another queen, Health Secretary Wes Streeting, is the bookie’s favourite to become the next PM. Also eyeing up Number 10 will be Zack Polanski, a gay ex-drama kid and hypo-therapist who dragged the Green Party from the political margins into the most exciting populist party in Britain to the left-side of Labour (a rather empty, albeit).
For Sir Keir, it has been crisis after political crisis. This latest instalment comes in the wake of the May 7th local council elections in England, Holyrood elections in Scotland and Senedd elections in Wales. In these, Labour haemorrhaged 1,229 council seats, mostly to far-right upstart Reform UK, and lost the Senedd for the first time since 1922, also to Reform. Keir has stubbornly refused to back down, but bookies shouldn’t be surprised if Wes Streeting steps into Number 10, crowning the UK its first-ever gay Prime Minister.
As part of his last gasp effort to remain in power, Starmer has also proposed a re-entry into the EU market, where things have been moving swiftly since Orbán’s ousting. Sanctions on Israeli settlers, which Orbán had used his veto to obstruct, including travel bans and frozen assets, can now go ahead. Meanwhile, the door has opened for harsher sanctioning of Russia over the war in Ukraine, which lurches closer toward EU membership. And at home in Hungary, Márta Görög, new Prime Minister Péter Magyar’s nominee for justice minister, has pledged to repeal Orbán-era laws restricting access to LGBTQ+ content as part of its “child-protection legislation”.
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INVESTIGATION
From Austria: Eurovision is a Military Zone
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POP CULTURE
From the World: Poster Artists Responded to the AIDS Crisis
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BUSINESS
From the USA: Sniffies Dating App Radical Changes
Match Group has taken a $100 million stake in Sniffies, the cruising platform that queer men opened to skip the dating-app ritual altogether. Users worry about gentrification. They should worry about who owns the geolocation data.
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