One Country, Two Fires

A week ago, the Henry Nowak case was the story dominating the news agenda. Then Belfast caught fire — literally — and two separate stories became one. Percy and Joseph work through how a murder in Southampton and a knife attack in Northern Ireland became one national tinderbox.

What we got into:

• This week's number: minus six. Nigel Farage's net approval on his handling of the Nowak case — the worst of any senior leader in Britain. Andrew has a Boris-shaped theory about why it might not matter.
• Two nights of Belfast riots. Water cannon in Newtownabbey, twelve injured officers...and expectation that a third night will rage on. Why Northern Ireland's fire burns on different fuel than England's.
• Why hasn't Canada had its Southampton? Same immigration anxieties, same online ecosystem, no riots. Andrew's answer involves dinghies, hotels, and what people can see from the war memorial.
• The thug problem. The rioters are making it harder to fix the very system some of them claim to be angry about — and the only winners are the actual far right.
• An opening for Kemi? Badenoch sits at plus twelve and keeps quietly stacking strong performances. We ask whether anyone will notice before they have to.
• Starmer's "island of strangers." The line that resonated, the 180 that followed, and what it says about who's allowed to talk about immigration.

Also discussed: Vancouver's curiously invisible World Cup, the case against $500 tickets, why Andrew is boycotting Belgium over his grandma's tortoiseshell cigarette case, and his suspiciously great skin and hair on CBC.

For Last Orders: Joseph is finally on to Wind of Change, the podcast asking whether the CIA wrote a Scorpions power ballad — and Andrew remembers Baroness Meta Ramsay, the softly spoken Labour peer he treated like his grandma on foreign delegations, who turned out to be one of MI6's most senior officers. Obituary linked below —https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/meta-ramsay-death-mi6-spy-b2985761.html.

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