Broad with Polly Vernon

A writer, a boxer and a Botox-er. "Unapologetically writes things we are all a bit too scared to commit to thinking - never mind, writing." @styledbyUna

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Keir Starmer, pornography, summer shopping

Broad, do you see?

Polly Vernon

Jun 24, 2026

Gah, Prime Ministers’ resignation speeches always get me! It’s how they look: their complexions, ashen, on no sleep; on all those hours of exhaustively talking it out with the increasingly minute circle of people in whom they can still place trust.

Trying to find a way out, a plan, a chance!

Finding none.

The haunted, hunted demeanour, that emotional hangover of just SO MUCH betrayal, all at once, so much backstabbing; perpetuated by people who once championed them to the ends of the earth and back.

Cos even if they knew, theoretically, that that was coming for them sooner or later, which they must…

The realities of it!

Of:

Oh - not you?

Not you?

And it’s how power ebbs from them as they stand, at that podium of doom, saying words they do not want to say. How power bleeds from them, leaving them s uited and booted,depleted and ordinary, in the time it takes to say: “I have spoken to His Majesty the King…”

The pity. The rapidly enforced humility. The barely-contained tears.

The recourse to family, to the husband, the wife, who’ll hug them with devoted ferocity the moment it’s over, because they still have them.

Ah, it gets me good!

I mean, maybe not with Johnson - too jolly, too defiant - definitely not Truss, but: May (when her voice broke on “country I love”), and Sunak (walking hand in hand with Akshata Murty, away from Number 10, toward family), Thatcher, crying in the car, and now Starmer… I believe they cared, most of them. I believe they were - again: most of them - half decent men and women, who truly hoped to make things better, even if I did not agree with their approach, didn’t share their values.

It’s like they get unmasked as just humans, in that moment. Like when zombies in horror films get shot through the head and, as they die, transform back into the gentle, average people they were, before they got bitten.

Prime Ministers, in the moment of their ousting, stop being the stern faced embodiment of everything that was going wrong in the country, and in your life, and turn into - just people, who tried, and who are now accepting failure.

I… “cheered myself up” is truly not the turn of phrase for which I reach; erm, “shifted my vibe” might be closer… by watching the new BBC doc on OnlyFans ( OnlyFans, Inside The Machin e) on iPlayer. It is not edifying. The platform, which allows users to create, broadcast and charge for adult content, in much the same way SubStack allows writers to create, publish and charge for their writing, has generated an eco system of wrong ‘uns around it, men who set themselves up as managers, promise OnlyFans creators vastly increased income, then rip them off financially, push them into filming things they never wanted to film, and bullying and threatening them until they try to leave, at which point, some of the “managers” became physically violent.

They’re often called e-pimps, except apparently they don’t like that. They like “OFM”. OnlyFans Managers.

I guess they find “e-pimp” demeaning.

I have tried to be cool with porn. Truly, I have. Some people insist it’s feminist. But I dunno, I just always come up against that thing where, when we’re talking about an industry which - however its formatted, OnlyFans or classic OG version - relies uniquely on the bodies of women too young, and too economically vulnerable, to realistically be considered as having all that much of a choice, (throw in OnlyFans narrative there is empowerment in doing it “their” way, in owning and controlling your content - up until an OFM ensnares you - never mind, a cultural context which tells you, you just don’t matter until you’re dripping in the moist blatant signifiers of wealth, how you get the money to buy them, doesn’t matter, the ends justify the means… )

In my experience? Those propositions? They never benefit women. Reliably, they harm us. They harm us if we’re directly involved - the OnlyFans creators interviewed in the BBC doc talked about how they went into it with a load of boundaries, really clear ideas of what they would and wouldn’t do…
And how quickly that got steamrollered, either by the managers, or just by the urgency to get the clicks, play the algorithm - and they harm us if we’re not, if we’re just swimming around in an offline societal soup increasingly influenced by behaviours and expectations set online.

I don’t see how this empowers anyone, honestly. Not us, not the models… Not even the men paying for OnlyFans, whose loneliness epidemic is being wilfully, gleefully exploited by OFMs, who say things like: “We didn't create it, but we will cash in on it”.

OH GOD I’VE GONE DARK AGAIN!

I’m sorry.

I’m actually in a fanatically good mood. I know it’s stupidly hot, but that means everyone is dressing really creatively to accommodate it, which I so enjoy, plus the array of sundresses suddenly on display makes my heart soar!

Me? Oh, I think I have found THE perfect heatwave dress. I have been having such a great time with myself while wearing it.

It’s the Edina by Rixo. It’s perfection lies in its wafty off whiteness - it is so light I nearly didn't even sweat on the Tube - and off white is v flattering, but also, in that it’s ostensibly quite modest - full length, big collar, half-length sleeves - AND YET, it is distinctly opaque, which adds to the wafting, but also makes it sexier than it would be if it were a heavier cotton. £285, affiliates. (It’d look amazing with a slip underneath too - you know, if you’re not quite as me, as I am.)

(On the theme of keeping cool, my mate Nora also gave me a recipe for The Best Salad Ever. Long time listeners will know I am not one of life’s chefs (I only recently taught myself how to poach eggs off YouTube - that’s what you’re dealing with, here), but we were leaving strength training together, she was talking about making it, it sounded DELISH and crucially EASY, so she took me to Fam with her, to make sure I got the ingredients right.

Here are the ingredients

1. 1 big fat wodge of watermelon.
2. 1 chunk of feta cheese.
3. 1 bushel of mint.
4. 1/4 of red onion.
5. 2 limes for the squeezin’.

You roughly chop up basically everything that can be roughly chopped - the melon, the feta and the mint…
Oh, but not the red onion. You finely slice that… Whack them in a bowl together, salt and pepper them liberally and squeeze the limes over them, “then don’t forget a glug of olive oil” Nora told me, “Yes! Even on the melon!”. I did as she said and honestly, it might be the height of my culinary reaches, which I appreciate isn’t saying much, but blimey it is tasty and refreshing and good. I ate it before photographing it, so here’s the greatest cinematic watermelon reference ever instead.

I bought these Monica Vinader hoop earrings in the sale (£118.30, down from £169, that’s 30% off), and they’re also pretty perfect. Big enough to be dramatic, light enough to not even slightly weigh your lobes down. I can forget about them and they cause no bother, I wear them to exercise classes even.

And that bangle I told you about earlier seems to have sold out before I got it, so now? I’m contemplating THIS (I really REALLY love a bangle slip-sliding about on a bare summer arm). £111.30, down from £159, 30% off . Affiliates on both these.

Absolute did NOT see it coming but… win of the heatwave so far, is these white balloon pant s from Albaray’s collaboration with Anna Unwin. I was gifted them because I am a spoiled be-atch; when I first unpacked them, I thought, yeah, not in a GAZILLION years, because I wouldn't describe them as balloon pants, I’d call them harem pants: the crotch is WAY down between your calves, you see. ANYWAY, having thought not in a GAZILLION years, I put them on, and instantly changed my mind. How can something so theoretically preposterous in fact be so easy? I do not know. But they are. All that movement is just kinda gorgeous, the voluminous volume is a) really literally cool, b) really conceptually cool, and c) immensely flattering; they’re made to create the illusion of a super defined waist. £99, affiliates.

(They also have that opaque Rixo dress factor going on. It reminds me of the pic of young Diana in the transparent skirt, which was deeply problematic in retrospect, yet still something toward which I quietly aspire.)

Also getting SO MUCH WEAR out of the M&S leather flip flops, £30, which have all the insouciance of flip flops, but with the leather, which makes them substantially more chic.

One last thing: I went to my local chemists because my hay fever was going haywire, and asked for Allevia, which had, to this point, been the most impactful thing by far, and my chemist said:

”Would you like something stronger?”

“HELL YES!” I said, at which point she furnished me with 30 of these beauties, Histahive.

The drug in Allevia is Fexofenadine, street name “fexy”* (*not really, it’s an OTC drug, broadly available, it doesn’t have a street name); Allevia has it at 120mg a tablet, but Hitsahive? Oh, 180, my friends! ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY! Better yet, it’s non drowsy.

It worked like a charm on my hay fever, but then, when I got an especially infuriating mosquito bite on my shoulder (f**kers are active this year, no?), within 20 minutes of my taking a tablet, it was pretty much all gone. Shrunk to non-itchy irrelevance.

Can not recommend enough.