A Tuesday night at a punk gig in Camden and the political apocalypse outside it
Satire from Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Dear diary. Tuesday. The Roundhouse. Warm beer, sticky floor, a band from Peckham playing like the amp was personally offending them. This is what I pay rent in London for. This is the only reasonable response to the news that Reform UK has just taken 1,452 council seats across England and Nigel Farage is currently the most popular political force in the country. You do not write a think-piece about that. You put on your boots and you go watch four people scream into microphones at a room that smells like 1977.
The gig was brilliant. The band — I will not name them because I want them to stay underground and mine — opened with three minutes of pure feedback and then launched into something that sounded like a manifesto read at triple speed. The crowd was forty people, half of them in their fifties who still have the original Crass patches. I love these people. They have been furious since before I was born and they have not stopped. That is a kind of heroism that the political establishment does not know what to do with.
The Problem with Starmer and Why Punk Saw It Coming
The Newsthump headline this week said something like “Labour MPs Call For Starmer To Resign In Manner Suggesting They Still Think This Will Help.” Accurate. Over 95 Labour MPs have now signed something or said something or resigned something. Wes Streeting quit. Jess Phillips quit. The rats are not just leaving the ship — they are giving interviews about how much they loved the ship. The punk instinct, which I trust more than any focus group, has always known that a party that sprints to the centre the moment it wins power is a party that has forgotten why it existed. Starmer forgot. Fast.
Meanwhile Farage is out here collecting councils like Panini stickers. Essex. Lincolnshire. Havering. The poster outside the tube station that someone has defaced with a green marker to make Farage look like he has antlers. Small victories. The antlers are good.
What the Gig Actually Did
The singer — small woman, enormous voice — stopped between songs and said: “Everyone in this room is angry about something different and that is fine, that is punk, what is not fine is pretending the thing you are angry about does not exist.” The room roared. I roared. This is better political theory than anything I have read in the Guardian this week, and I read the Guardian every day like a penance.
The walk home from Chalk Farm at midnight was the London I actually live in: the night bus with its usual cast, a man eating chips with the commitment of someone who has had a very long day, two teenagers playing music from one phone that sounded inexplicably like reggaeton. Fine. All fine. The city continues. Farage continues. The punk continues. So do I.
The punk scene in London in June 2026 is the punk scene in London in every June since approximately 1977: small rooms, loud music, people who are angry about specific things rather than everything in general, which is the distinction between real punk and the performative version. The specific things this week include Reform winning councils, Starmer continuing to govern, the housing costs, the bus services that do not arrive, and the specific London inequality that puts a fifteen-pound cocktail bar next to a food bank queue on the same street in Brixton. Punk was invented for this. Punk continues for this. I continue with it. Find me at prat.uk/author/siobhan-odonnell/.
Find me at prat.uk/author/siobhan-odonnell/ when I have slept. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention. The week in full is at the author page. The diary continues next week from the same place with the same attention.
More at https://www.theonion.com.
SOURCE: Satirical Journalism
