Coronations and Contradictions
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.
Our subscribers sustain our award-winning journalism. Join them today.
Thermometer€15 is a forgettable expense for most of our readers. It's everything to this story.
We prepare a series of investigations on the expansion of Pride and the financial structure behing them.
For our reporting we nee funds for travel.
We need now 250 donors at €15. We have 117. Please help our journalism!
Coronations and Contradictions
By Jude Jones, editor-in-chief
The UK has elected a new Prime Minister. Not officially, however the return of Andy Burnham -- the now former Mayor of Greater Manchester, England’s second city -- to Westminster was as good as a death knell for Sir Keir Starmer, Europe’s second-most unpopular leader. Within hours, he announced his resignation. Nobody is expected to stand in Burnham’s way. Even Wes Streeting, the gay politician who this columnist flouted as Starmer’s presumptive successor just weeks ago, has refused. Pundits are already calling the move a coronation.
Burnham is a political chameleon. He’s a man of ill-formed beliefs and rugged charisma -- which makes him the perfect foil to Starmer’s rugged beliefs and ill-formed charisma. But he battered Reform UK, a right-wing populist party, in a constituency where they were expected to over-perform, perhaps even defeat his Labour Party, and did so on a platform that refused to pander to nativist beliefs. If the Labour Party’s biggest battle in the next few years is staving off incipient fascism, Burnham might be the best bet.
Across the pond and in a different world entirely, Paris and Milan fashion weeks have found themselves confronting two realities at once. The first was meteorological. Parts of Europe are enduring temperatures above 40°C, forcing designers to think seriously about what people can actually wear in a warming continent. Brands like Rick Owen and Dior, which had planned to stage shows outside at high noon, have been forced to reschedule to prevent torturing models and attendees alike.
The second reality was more familiar. Across major houses including Prada, Dior and Gucci, the oversized silhouettes of recent years appear to be giving way to something slimmer. Fashion critics have already begun debating the return of the skinny male body ideal. The timing is awkward. After a decade of public commitments to body diversity and inclusivity, luxury fashion once again seems drawn to thinness. Fashion has always excelled at selling contradictions, but this one feels particularly stark: a culture increasingly aware of the physical realities of bodies, and an industry still captivated by a very specific kind of body.
Elsewhere, on 18 June, Nepal’s Supreme Court issued a binding directive requiring the government to guarantee equal marriage rights for same-sex couples, consolidating a legal trajectory that already placed Nepal among the most progressive jurisdictions in Asia on LGBTQ+ recognition. Activists described the ruling as a landmark moment in a region where formal equality remains rare, and where legal change has often lagged far behind social reality.
By contrast, Niger moved in the opposite direction. In early June, its military government introduced a new penal code that explicitly criminalises homosexuality for the first time in the country’s history, with penalties of five to ten years in prison for same-sex relations and harsher sentences -- up to twenty years in some cases -- for what authorities define as “related offences.” Previously, same-sex activity had been socially stigmatised but not explicitly outlawed. Human rights groups described the move as part of a broader regional pattern of tightening restrictions in parts of the Sahel, where military regimes have increasingly paired political consolidation with social conservatism. The contrast with Nepal is stark enough to resist euphemism: global LGBT+ rights are not advancing or retreating, but splintering into entirely different legal universes.
MUST READ OF GAY45
MUSIC
From Germany: WHOLE Festival with a Political Edge
WHOLE Festival recently confirmed the full programme of their eighth edition at Ferropolis, the former industrial mining site just outside Berlin, from 17 to 20 July 2026 — and they arrive with something to say.
BOOKS
From the USA: Inside the Imperial Presidency of Donald Trump
'They wrest reality itself back from the distorted world of entertainment, illusion, fantasy and denial that Trump has generated around himself.', says Fintan O’Toole in The New York Times.
FILM AND TV
From Spain: La Bola Negra, a Brilliant Film
Los Javis complete Lorca’s unfinished queer masterwork — and win hearts at Cannes.
AND MORE ON GAY45.eu
Political and entertainment quality journalism from Europe and the world.
For in-depth commentary on the week’s essential stories, listen to our weekly podcast, Queer News & Journalism.Support independent queer journalism: subscribe to keep our reporting free for everyone, or make a donation.
For ads here, contact taylor@gay45.eu