The Transatlantic Tea 5
A bit earlier than usual so I can head off for my very first 4th July as an American resident!
Glastonbury
I was hoping the Glastonbury section would show how Britain’s culture can be a critical soft power lever but it instead led to the first NYT news alert about the UK I’ve seen for months, highlighting the story about Bob Vylan’s antisemitic chants and resulting cancellation of their US visa. NYT have four separate stories, including a piece about Kneecap’s performance under the headline ‘Kneecap Brings Pro-Palestinian Politics Back Onstage at Glastonbury’ . WaPo have six pieces, including a summary from AP on the history of the festival and politics. NPR, American public radio, ran the story throughout Monday. WSJ’s piece focuses on the role of the BBC and on anti-Israel sentiment increasing in the UK and across much of Europe. Fox covers the cancellation of the US visas on the channel and their online piece makes the link to a rise in antisemitism in the UK. Breitbart covers Chris Philp’s comments in the Telegraph, with the piece describing it as an example of ‘two tier justice’ if arrests aren’t made.
Welfare Reform
ABC use AP copy to cover the rebellion over the Welfare Bill and a brutal first para summary ‘British Prime Minister Keir Starmer marks a year in office this week, fighting a rebellion from his own party in a vote Tuesday on welfare reform and reckoning with a sluggish economy and rock-bottom approval ratings.’
NYT link the fall in the pound to ‘uncertainty over UK finance chief’, with a photo of the Chancellor from PMQs and a quote from analysts at Rabobank that investor optimism in Britain “has been sapped.” The Washington Examiner - a MAGA outlet that rarely reports on Britain - went with the headline UK markets roil as weakening government cancels spending cuts and described Starmer as having ‘bottled it’ regarding benefits reform.
NYT cover Labour’s poor position in the polls with analysis from a US strategist advising that Labour should ‘embrace more left wing economic policies like a wealth tax, deepen trade ties with the EU and redouble its investment in green energy projects.’
Best of the Rest
NYT cover the report into the Heathrow power outage earlier this year under the headline ‘Heathrow Shutdown Caused by Problem Left Unfixed by Power Company for Years’. WaPo take a similar approach, describing it in the headline as a ‘preventable technical fault’ and CNBC also covers.
WSJ describe the scrapping of the Royal Train as ‘public fiscal self-flagellation’. There are quite a few nostalgia tinged stories about the train, including this CNN report.
GB news expansion to America made it into Monday morning’s DC Playbook THE BRITISH ARE COMING: Upstart alt-right British TV channel GB News is opening a Washington bureau and offering its services free-to-air in the U.S. for the first time. The MAGA-friendly channel has shaken up Britain’s round-the-clock news scene over recent years, offering a stridently conservative take on current affairs … while frequently stretching the boundaries of what’s permitted under strict U.K. impartiality laws.
A note on DC life…
There’s something very comfortingly British about the obsession with the weather here - we’ve had a heatwave and now storms. But one of the great things about living in DC is the number of great day/weekend trips around. So we are heading to Annapolis for the long weekend, which is No5 on CNN’s 2025 list of top US towns to visit.
… And for any further analysis on the US media environment or communications support, do get in touch!