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Greetings lovely people,

No tomfoolery this week, just a quick question to kick us off.

Do I look fat in this shirt? How would you feel about our email in your inbox twice weekly?

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⏰ Today's reading time is 6 minutes

Russo-German relations are heating up. 

Berlin announced this week that it had found Russia responsible for a failed drone attack in Leipzig airport designed to target a logistics hub connected to support for Ukraine. 

Presumably, the attempted attack was Russia’s retaliation for Operation Barbarossa 1941 and Germany’s ‘unwavering’ support for Ukraine since February 2022. 

Since Tuesday, a cultural war has been launched between Russia and Germany. 

First off, Berlin made the bold and daring choice to terminate its rental contract with the Russian House (Russia’s cultural institute) and to close its last-standing Russian consulate in Bonn.

Putin clearly took this snub to heart and has gone a step further…deciding to close the Goethe-Institute in Moscow.

When Berlin announced that it was now in a ‘hybrid war’ with Russia, who could possibly have guessed that language classes and foreign film screenings would be the first thing to go.

Middle-class snobs across both nations are devastated.

The UK had better be on high alert however: with Putin’s threats on UK infrastructure after Burnham’s announcement of support for Ukraine, we may soon face the unbearable reality of the British Institute in Moscow potentially closing down. 

War really is a horrible thing.

Day 1 was a big day for Burnham: the first time in 16 years since he’s appeared in the Commons as an MP…and this time as PM.

He began his tenure with a mammoth 3-hour address and responses to 125 questions from MPs, for which the opposition leader, Kemi Badenoch, congratulated his ‘stamina’.

Get a room, you two.

Innuendos aside, Kemi did manage to grill Andy on the increasing cost of borrowing as the yield on British 30-year gilts rose to 5.89% (highest since 1998), pushing government debt repayments higher. 

Scrapping the Triple Lock on Pensions could help ease bond markets, according to Lord ‘Jim’ O’Neill, but that looks about as likely as Burnham cracking out a rendition of Bigmouth Strikes Again live in the Commons.

Oh wait.

Andy’s going to be a busy bee in the coming months:

And alongside that, he’s also got to find the time to travel up North for a chippy and some bitter ale.

Sheeeen, Shine, Shain— however you want to pronounce it, one thing is true. 

Turns out CHEAP shit is, fundamentally, just cheap SHIT. 

Or so it seems for Shein this week.

Shein entered the stock markets on Monday with an initial public offering price of $26 billion— that’s already about a ¼ of what it was at its peak in 2022 of $100 billion (note: that’s more than Zara and H&M combined).

Already its shares have tanked by 10%. 

It entered the markets in Hong Kong. It tried in New York. New York didn’t want it. It tried in London. London said no. 

The fast fashion brand’s reputation has been completely hammered. And its stock market debut reflects that. 

Just a reminder of Shein’s many, many transgressions:

Ironically, Trump’s trade war on China has been hitting Shein where it hurts. No more tax breaks for small packages means that Shein’s only real USP, being cheap, has been wiped out.

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When we think of Texas we think of cowboys, oil, and rampant obesity gun ownership. In short, the essence of America.  

We don’t usually think of the Democratic Party, but this could be about to change in the upcoming senate elections. 

Statewide elections in Texas were comfortably won by Republicans in 2024, but an opening has appeared for the Democrats to mount a challenge. 

Republican inflighting over issues like gun control, data centres and sending aid to Ukraine have divided the party, and voters are also unhappy with Trump over the Iran not-a-war. 

Recent polling suggests that the race between the state attorney general and man of impeccable character, Ken Paxton (R) and representative James Talarico (D) is now a toss up.

If the midterms break right for the Democrats, winning Texas could help them take control of the Senate until 2028. 

Longer term, it could also signal redrawn battle lines ahead of the 2028 presidential election. As the demographic profile of Texas becomes younger and less white, the state should become winnable for the Democrats again. 

We're not getting carried away.

The odds still marginally favours a Paxton win, and Texans are still, well, Texan; they haven’t elected a Democrat statewide since 1994.

Out of the fire and into the frying pan: He’s been back in Parliament since Tuesday, but Nigel Farage is already under fire after Channel 4 published an undercover investigation into Reform UK.

The investigation follows a Verbatim journalist undercover as the son of an American businessman looking to donate to Reform UK. Footage shows two Farage aides, Dan Jukes and James Orr, asking for benefits in kind and suggesting how to skirt Britain’s ban on foreign political donations.

Orr even suggested the foreign donor could pay for a Reform poll by “literally do[ing] the old John Le Carré – you print [the bill] off, put it in a brown envelope, drop it off somewhere.”

Unsurprisingly, Jukes and Orr have stepped back from frontline duties pending investigation, but Farage has come out swinging, crying “entrapment” and claiming “Reform has broken no law”.

We’ll leave that one up to the Electoral Commission (it’s not looking good bruv), but Farage admitted the report is “not what you want” especially as Reform opens its conference in Birmingham.

Farage has wriggled out of scandals before, but whether this sting will end his and Reform UK’s credibility remains to be seen. That is, if the parliamentary standards commissioner doesn’t get to him first over “personal gifts”.

Full video is available here.

Congratulations to Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who today became Italy’s longest-serving head of government since the end of WW2 (1,413 days in office).

If you change the timeframe to the beginning of the century, she is still decisively in second place.

Nonetheless, it’s a great achievement for a country that used to go through Prime Ministers as if they were the UK, as if they were pairs of underpants.

Italy has had 68 governments in the past 80 years. That works out to just over a year on average.

To give you an idea of just how unstable Italy used to be politically, the previous longest-serving Prime Minister was a certain Silvio Berlusconi (rest easy, young prince), whose career highlights include:

We could fill a whole newsletter with Berlusconi's antics, but let’s not take attention away from Giorgia.

Opposition politicians say the hype around the government’s longevity record is cover for the lack of progress in tackling the economy’s longstanding structural problems, including high energy costs and low productivity.

GDP growth has been below 1%, and decelerating, in the past three years, making Italy one of the slowest-growing economies in Europe, despite an infusion of nearly €200bn from the EU’s post-Covid recovery fund.

Yet pollsters say Meloni’s favourability ratings have remained pretty stable over the past year, buoyed by her strong communication skills and perceived authenticity, and no doubt by Italian voters’ low to non-existent expectations of their governments.

What is it with the French upper-middle class and dating people much younger than them?

More than three decades since the teenage Emmanuel Macron fell for the married schoolteacher who would become his wife, her daughter has found romance with a student 20 years her junior.

Love him or hate him, Freud really was onto something.

Tiphaine Auzière, the 42-year-old daughter of the First Lady of France Brigitte Macron, has gone public with her relationship with Antoine Lecomte, 22, a business school student from Lille. Go off queen, do your thing.

Christmas at the Macrons this year should be interesting…

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Thanks to Faris & Rob