Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The price of fuel for nuclear reactors has surged much faster than that of raw uranium since the start of 2022, in a sign of the bottlenecks that have built up in the west following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Enriched uranium has more than tripled in price to $176 per separative work unit — the standard measure of the effort required to separate isotopes of uranium — since the start of 2022, according to UxC, a data provider.

Demand for uranium has been driven by a revival in atomic power. However, Russia plays a significant role in the multi-stage process of turning mined uranium into the fuel for a nuclear reactor. This includes converting yellowcake — uranium concentrate — into uranium hexafluoride gas, enriching it to increase the concentration of the type of uranium used for fission, and then turning the enriched uranium into pellets that go into reactors.

Uranium hexafluoride has jumped fourfold in price to $68 per kg in the same period, indicating that conversion is the biggest bottleneck in the nuclear fuel supply chain, analysts said. In contrast, uranium ore has only doubled in price.

“The conversion and enrichment prices are reflecting a much bigger supply squeeze due to the Russia-Ukraine war and other factors,” said Jonathan Hinze, chief executive of UxC.

“Uranium alone does not tell the whole story when it comes to price impacts in the nuclear fuel supply chain.”

Russia controls 22 per cent of global uranium conversion capacity and 44 per cent of enrichment capacity. Those services are out of bounds for some western utilities following a US ban on Russian uranium, although waivers are allowed until the end of 2027.

France, US, Canada and China are the other countries besides Russia that are home to large-scale conversion sites.

The US government said this week that it is closely tracking whether imports of uranium from China are providing a back door for Russian material, after bumper exports in May when the ban was introduced.

The UK used to contribute to global conversion capacity via the Springfields site but conversion services halted in 2014, while France’s plant has faced delays in getting to full capacity.

“The conversion market is very, very tight for the simple reason that existing facilities are in care and maintenance,” said Grant Isaac, chief financial officer at Cameco, the world’s second-largest uranium producer, on an earnings call.

“Because of the delays in getting all of the conversion-producing centres up to full production in the western world . . . conversion has a very good tail of strength for the next little while.”

While higher nuclear fuel prices are likely to hit the profitability of power companies, the bigger issue is making sure there is enough investment in mines, conversion and enrichment to meet demand from extensions to existing reactors’ lifetime and new ones.

Nuclear fuel companies such as France’s Orano and British-Dutch-German owned Urenco have committed to boosting enrichment capacity, but so far no one has committed to building new conversion capacity in the west.

Nicolas Maes, chief executive of Orano, said at an industry conference this month that investments needed in conversion and enrichment were “massive” compared with the size of the relevant companies.

He compared Orano’s annual revenues of almost €5bn to the €1.7bn needed to expand its enrichment capacity in southern France by more than 30 per cent.

Johnathan Chavers, director of nuclear fuel and analysis at Southern Nuclear, which operates eight nuclear plants in the US, said at the same conference that utilities and the nuclear fuel suppliers were unwilling to make “big bets” due to a “chicken and egg problem”.

Power plant operators are reluctant to sign long-term supply agreements unless the facilities are being built, giving certainty over expected delivery times for nuclear fuel, yet suppliers balk at making big investments without such deals to underwrite them, he said.

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Artificial intelligence-powered search engine Perplexity is in talks with brands including Nike and Marriott over its new advertising model, as the start-up mounts an ambitious effort to break Google’s stranglehold over the $300bn digital ads industry.

The San Francisco-based group is seeking to redesign the auction-based ads system pioneered by Google, where marketers bid to have a sponsored link placed against search queries.

At present, Perplexity’s AI chatbot gives a comprehensive response to user questions based on information from the internet, citing sources and including links to web pages. Below this, Perplexity offers suggested follow-up queries.

Under its new advertising model, brands will be able to bid for a “sponsored” question, which features an AI-generated answer approved by the advertiser.

Perplexity has held talks with a small number of top companies, including Nike and Marriott, according to correspondence seen by the Financial Times. The company said it hoped to roll out the ads system by the end of the year and was targeting “premium” brands. Nike and Marriott declined to comment.

Aravind Srinivas, Perplexity’s chief executive and a former Google intern, said: “Ads are really useful when they are relevant and coming from brands that are high quality, and a lot of people make purchases based on that.”

Perplexity’s effort is part of a wave of new competition faced by Google as the search business undergoes its most radical shift in more than two decades.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT also provides quick and complete answers to many questions, threatening to render redundant a traditional search engine’s list of links, and the lucrative ads that appear alongside them.

Google, which has spent billions of dollars developing generative AI, has launched an experimental AI search function and also considered offering a subscription AI search service, the FT reported in April.

Analysts suggest Google is held back by the “innovator’s dilemma” as generative AI could damage the basis of its existing search offering. However, there remains scepticism on whether the technology will seriously disrupt Google’s dominance.

Under Perplexity’s ad system, marketers will be charged on a so-called CPM basis — paying above $50 for every 1,000 impressions generated by these sponsored posts, said a person familiar with the model. This compares with an estimated $1,100 for the same number of impressions by Google, according to analysts eMarketer.

Last year, Microsoft chief Satya Nadella said its multibillion-dollar alliance with OpenAI would improve its Bing search engine, while helping to demolish the high profit margins that have underpinned Google’s core business.

But despite being one of the first big tech giants to add AI to search, Microsoft has only just started to gain more share in search advertising in the latest quarter, said Joseph Teasdale, head of tech at Enders Analysis.

Meanwhile, Google’s search business has grown 14 per cent in the three months to June, compared with the same period the year before. Search accounted for $48.5bn in revenue, more than half of parent company Alphabet’s total revenues.

“As the incumbent champion, Google has the most to lose from any shake-up,” Teasdale said. “But Google is also in the strongest position: it’s strong in AI, users trust it for search, and it controls key user surfaces like Android and Chrome that it can deploy its version of AI search on.”

The financial success of Perplexity’s new ads system depends on whether it can gain significant scale. The company says 250mn queries were made on its search engine in July, compared with 500mn in the whole of last year.

Perplexity makes money through subscriptions, charging $20 a month for its Pro service, which offers access to more advanced models and image generation. Annualised revenues — a projection of full-year revenues based on extrapolating the most recent month’s sales — have grown from $5mn in January to $35mn in August, according to the company.

Srinivas said he wanted its advertising system to become “a money-printing machine.”

“A good chunk of our traffic comes from the US and other high GDP countries, making it a good experiment . . . we want to IPO and be a successful company of our own, and there is no reason not to be.”

Additional reporting by Eri Sugiura and Kana Inagaki

Brad Raffensperger is all too familiar with attempts to subvert US democracy.

The Secretary of State for Georgia was on the receiving end of the infamous Donald Trump phone call after the 2020 election, when the then-president urged his fellow Republican to “find” the 11,780 votes he needed to win the state. Raffensperger refused and death threats ensued.

Almost four years on from the unrest that followed the last presidential election, Raffensperger is again in the crosshairs of the Trump faithful, as he battles a Maga-friendly majority on the swing state’s election board who passed last-minute laws that critics claim will pave the way for post-election legal chaos, if not violent unrest.

“There are a lot of bad actors out there,” Raffensperger acknowledged as he visited a polling station in DeKalb County this week for a “security health check”, a live test of one of the big-screen voting machines that will be used across Georgia on the November 5 election. “That’s why we need people that are going to stand their ground no matter what.”

If the loudest election deniers in the Republican party are to be believed, there will be plenty for Raffensperger to resist.

He and others in the state are in a battle to prevent ‘bad actors’ from undermining the vote in Georgia, both through public education about voting systems and by rolling out security measures, including panic buttons, for poll workers and training in using antidotes for poisoning.

Simultaneously, officials at the county level “are trying to lay the groundwork to dispute the election results in Georgia if former president Trump loses,” said Nikhel Sus, deputy chief counsel at the advocacy group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (Crew).

Their goal is to use allegations of fraud as a “pretext” for election deniers who would then refuse to ratify the results from Georgia on January 6 2025, he added, in what “would literally be history repeating itself”.

Trump has foreshadowed such an outcome. “We have to make sure that we stop [Democrats] from cheating,” he said at an Atlanta rally in August. He then praised three of five members of the state election board as “pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory”.

The trio, who were appointed by Republicans, have pushed through a last-minute rule change that allows local election officials to halt the certification of election results in order to conduct a “reasonable inquiry”, without defining what reasonable might look like.

The board on Friday introduced a rule that all ballots in Georgia must be hand-counted — a move that campaigners warned was unlawful and unworkable, and could delay the election result for weeks. Raffensperger has accused the board of introducing “eleventh-hour chaos”, but he has no power to reverse their decisions.

A report published by Crew last month found that at least eight election officials in Georgia had refused to certify election results since 2020, the most of any swing state since the last cycle. They all remain in their positions.

With fewer than 50 days to go to the election, and Trump and Kamala Harris neck-and-neck in the Georgia polls, Raffensperger has embarked on a tour of more than two dozen counties to reassure the 5mn voters expected in the state that their votes will be safe.

Alongside technicians working for his office, he painstakingly demonstrates how the Dominion Voting Systems devices used in Georgia — themselves the target of conspiracy theories — are protected from hackers and illegal tampering, and how votes are digitally counted and cross referenced.

“There is a process in place and it has worked well in the past,” the 69-year-old former engineer said, in his soothing Southern drawl. He insisted local election officials have no discretion to stop certification. “When you come to the following Monday, the state law says you must, counties shall certify the election . . . that’s right there in black letter law.”

The Harris campaign, among others, is challenging the state election board’s new rules in court, with a trial set to begin next month.

Pro-democracy activists have expressed faith in the legal system to prevent attempts to delay results. Efforts to undermine the vote “will ultimately fail because of the robust protections in place and because journalists, pro-democracy advocates, and voters are watching closely,” said Justin Berger, a Georgia lawyer working for advocacy group Informing Democracy.

Crew said any election official who refuses to certify election results can expect to be sued “immediately” by well-prepared attorneys.

But Berger warned of an ominous “change of tactics” in the run-up to the 2024 vote. “It’s not so much a full-frontal assault as it is guerrilla warfare, because [the election deniers] win if they just create uncertainty . . . all it took was some manufactured uncertainty [in 2020] and we had January 6,” he said of the 2021 attack on Capitol Hill.

Although Georgia has more election deniers in crucial positions than elsewhere, they are making inroads in other swing states, including Arizona and Pennsylvania.

Marc Elias, a lawyer who successfully fought more than 60 lawsuits brought by election deniers in the aftermath of the 2020 vote and now works for the Harris campaign, has warned Republicans are “building an election subversion war machine” and are “far more organised” than four years ago.

As well as installing election deniers in key election administration roles, groups who promoted conspiracy theories after the 2020 vote have attempted to disqualify tens of thousands of voters in key states, in so-called mass voter challenges, claiming the rolls are full of dead people, illegal aliens, or Americans who have moved to other states.

Even if such efforts have been largely unsuccessful, there are mounting fears of voter intimidation and the targeting of poll workers.

A recent poll found almost 30 per cent of Republicans with favourable views of Trump want armed citizens to take over as poll watchers.

In Georgia, where two poll workers were hounded out of their homes and jobs after being falsely accused of fraud by then Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani after the last election, Raffensperger’s office has handed out lanyards with panic buttons to individuals working in precincts across the state.

Election supervisors have also been trained to use Narcan, an antidote to opioid poisoning, after fentanyl-laced letters were sent to the Fulton county board of elections office.

In an attempt to shore up confidence in the voting process, Georgia has joined forces with the “Vet the Vote” campaign, which encourages veterans to become poll workers, in the hope they will be trusted by voters across the political divide.

But Raffensperger is under no illusions that such measures will convert those who believe the conspiracy theories touted by members of his own party.

“Some people just can’t believe that their candidate has come up short,” he said. “I’ve been very clear that no matter how you look at it, there was a race back in 2020 and the 227 Republican congressmen all got more votes in all of their districts than president Trump did. And in Georgia, we saw the same thing . . . People just left the top of the ticket blank.”

Despite coming under repeated attack from Trump, who claimed at the Atlanta rally that Raffensperger was doing “everything possible to make 2024 difficult for Republicans to win”, the secretary enjoys a higher approval rating in Georgia than the former president.

“People know no matter what, I’m going to do my job,” Raffensperger said, even as he lamented that his “microphone’s not big enough” to drown out voices seeking to inject doubt about the integrity of Georgia’s elections.

When asked what would happen if a large number of counties refused to certify the vote in November, Raffensperger smiled ruefully. “Then the judges will be busy.”

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

I love Steve Coogan. I first saw him the night after he won the Perrier Award at Edinburgh in 1992 where he was appearing as one of his many alter egos, the Mancunian bombshell Pauline Calf. He was scorchingly hilarious, and I’ve been an ardent fan ever since. 

To my mind, Coogan’s most famous creation, the quintessential Little Englander and broadcaster Alan Partridge, remains one of the funniest characters on television, eclipsed only by Coogan’s turn as Himself in Michael Winterbottom’s The Trip. I have an infantile weakness for anyone who can do impressions, and enjoy few things in life so much as watching the actor “doing” Roger Moore. Next month sees Coogan in his first major West End role in a restaging of Stanley Kubrick’s Dr Strangelove, another collaboration with Armando Iannucci with whom he has worked for 30 years. He takes time out from rehearsals to talk about the undertaking, which will see him take on four roles (compared to Peter Sellers’ threesome), and a career that has seen him switch between high comedy and more serious parts.

Lately, Coogan has become a style icon – or at least his wardrobe has come to represent a style that typifies the British male. The crumpled linens, tan blazers and Ray-Bans of The Trip were the focus of much discussion about the modern wardrobe, and what might be appropriate for the mature man to wear. For this reason, I’m delighted that he should feature in this autumn’s men’s style issue, which I hope will be a useful and approachable guide. 

Why not make clothes that people actually want to wear?

In our tailor’s directory, for example, we unpick the bewildering range of services in London dedicated to the making of a suit. While many of our readers are keen to try bespoke suiting, many report feeling overwhelmed when trying to work out who and what will fit them best. Are they looking for something traditional and highly structured, or are they in search of something softer, lighter and with more slouch? Aleks Cvetkovic has put together an index that we hope may help. From the lean, lengthening lines of Edward Sexton to the regal cuts of Kent & Haste, we hope this answers everything you wanted to know about suiting but were afraid to ask.

Not in the market for a three-piece? Maybe a black hoodie is more your vibe. Mark C O’Flaherty has found out how the sporty basic has become akin to haute couture. Likewise, at Sunspel, the T-shirt specialists are debuting a bespoke service to help men (and women) find the perfect fit. We’ve sent Louis Wise to test it out. 

In the 13 years since founding his men’s ready-to-wear label Ami Paris, Alexandre Mattiussi has introduced womenswear, accessories, leather goods and jewellery, and turned his business into a global €300mn brand. His recipe for success has been the provision of a core line in utilitarian trousers, shirts and basics at an aspirational price point. His trousers especially come highly recommended by many of my peers. 

“I’m not a niche designer, I’m not an intellectual designer, I’m not a conceptual designer,” he tells Jessica Beresford. “I want to dress the maximum amount of people I can, in a very inclusive way.” Ami’s success reveals a truth within the industry that many brands don’t seem to hear. Why not make clothes that people actually want to wear?

Lastly, our cover story takes you on a journey across Croatia, aboard the Jadrolinija ferry with Leon Dame. It’s always a delight to feature my favourite supermodel on these pages: Dame is one of the only people in the world who could wear a bin bag and still look super-chic. 

@jellison22

Want to read HTSI before everyone else? Get all the top stories straight to your inbox every Friday. Sign up to our free weekly newsletter here

Welcome back. Ireland’s next general election is due by March, but few will be surprised if Simon Harris, the Taoiseach, chooses to go early and holds the poll in November. For Ireland’s friends and partners abroad, this raises three interesting questions.

To what extent will Ireland buck recent European trends and reject anti-establishment populism and political radicalism?

Will the election spell triumph or disaster for Sinn Féin, the opposition party that until recently was riding high in opinion polls?

And what are the implications for Sinn Féin’s ambition of unifying the Republic with Northern Ireland?

You can find me at tony.barber@ft.com.

The (partial) Irish exception

Answers to the first two questions require an understanding that, although Irish politics follows continental European patterns in many respects, it is distinctive in its own right.

The backdrop is similar in that immigration, asylum policy and the crucial issue of housing shortages are nowadays at the front of voters’ minds, as Fiachra Ó Cionnaith wrote in July for RTÉ News.

This is hardly surprising: according to Ireland’s statistics office, the number of immigrants — a category that includes Ukrainian refugees — had risen by April to a 17-year high.

Yet whereas in France, Germany and other western European countries such trends have pushed up support for hard-right parties, Ireland is different.

Writing in December after anti-immigrant riots rocked Dublin, Niklaus Nuspliger of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung observed:

Partly due to the long experience of emigration, solidarity and sympathy for foreigners traditionally prevail in the country, and there has never been a successful rightwing populist movement.

Still, in a survey published in December, 28 per cent of respondents said that they could imagine voting for a party with strongly anti-immigration positions — twice as many as in 2021.

Some far-right activists aim to whip up support by adopting the symbols and slogans of the Irish nationalist struggle against British rule in the age of imperialism. However, they remain on the wilder extremes of electoral politics.

Sinn Féin on the back foot

As a leftwing nationalist party with support among young people who have liberal views on immigration, Sinn Féin was slow to appreciate that it was losing touch with other voters on this issue. Jude Webber, the FT’s Dublin correspondent, wrote in March:

Some of Sinn Féin’s core working-class voter base has leached to small independent parties in recent months, including fringe groups opposed to immigration.

Partly as a consequence, the party had a disappointing result in June’s local elections. Now, as the chart below shows, support for Sinn Féin has slumped by half to about 19 per cent from roughly 36 per cent in July 2022.

It seems likely that, in contrast to some EU countries, the upcoming election will not send Ireland down the road of political polarisation and a legislature so fragmented that it’s hard to form a government (France is the prime example).

Rather, as for most of the past century, the reins of government will stay in the hands of Fianna Fáil and/or Fine Gael, Ireland’s largest mainstream parties. At present, they govern in a three-party coalition with the smaller Green party.

Even so, Sinn Féin remains a force to reckon with. For most of the post-second world war era, it was a minor party in electoral terms — abhorred by the mainstream parties as the mouthpiece of the IRA, which was fighting to end British rule in Northern Ireland.

Sinn Féin’s breakthrough came in the 2011 election at the height of Ireland’s involvement in the Eurozone sovereign debt and banking crises. In the last election in 2020, Sinn Féin emerged as the second largest party in the legislature.

Northern Ireland and unification

Moreover, Sinn Féin is consolidating its position as the largest party in Northern Ireland. Coupled with the destabilising effects of Brexit on politics in the province, this may seem to bring closer the prospect of Irish unification.

In practice, I don’t think this is likely in the near term. For one thing, Ireland’s next government will almost certainly not include Sinn Féin.

For another, recent polling suggests that more voters in Northern Ireland would choose to remain part of the UK than to merge the province with the Republic.

In the longer term, predictions are hazardous. The same polling indicates that a united Ireland is most popular with voters in the province aged under 45. Moreover, since Brexit, tens of thousands of people in Northern Ireland have been acquiring Irish passports.

Irish stallion outpaces EU donkeys

How will the state of Ireland’s economy affect the impending election?

At first sight, Ireland appears to be in the pink of health compared with other EU countries. This could work to the advantage of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael.

A gathering mood of gloom about Europe’s economic prospects was reinforced this month in Mario Draghi’s clarion call for rapid, far-reaching reforms, including annual investments of €800bn in a new industrial strategy. “Do this, or it’s a slow agony,” he told reporters.

There’s particular concern about Germany, as outlined in this commentary for the Omfif think-tank by Miroslav Singer, a former Czech central bank governor.

Germany’s economic issues are not only tied to the exhaustion of its economic model but also to the fact that the European Union’s largest economic project of the past 25 years — the euro — has fallen short of expectations.

In Ireland, matters seem to stand differently.

The economy is growing nicely, inflation is under control, there’s nearly full employment and the government is amassing large budget surpluses (in sharp contrast to, say, France or Italy).

These surpluses are prompting Ireland to set up two sovereign wealth funds to protect public services for the long term, modernise infrastructure and handle climate change. It’s almost as if Ireland is more like energy-rich Norway than most of its EU partners.

Money, money everywhere

Ireland owes its enviable fiscal position largely to high corporation tax receipts, as shown in the chart below.

Especially noteworthy is the €13bn windfall in back taxes due from Apple after a European Court of Justice ruling. It’s an extraordinary sum for a country of just over 5.3mn people.

The Irish government, keen to preserve its special tax arrangements for the US tech giant and other multinational companies, spent millions of euros in legal fees to avoid receiving this money. But in the end, life is life, isn’t it? Sometimes billions just drop into your bank account whether you like it or not.

All this shows how far Ireland appears to have progressed since the dark days of 2010 when it became the second country, after Greece, to require an EU-IMF emergency bailout (with some extra funds thrown in by the UK) amid the Eurozone crisis.

At that time, the Irish Times published an editorial that referred to the 1916 Easter Uprising against British rule, celebrated as a defining moment in the independence struggle. The newspaper asked if this was “what the men of 1916 died for: a bailout from the German chancellor with a few shillings of sympathy from the British chancellor on the side”.

Not all sweetness and light

Despite appearances, not all is perfect in the Irish economy. Scope Ratings, a credit-rating agency, says:

The Irish economy remains highly dependent on a small number of large [multinationals] . . . just three firms contribute around 43 per cent of corporation tax . . . as a small and very globalised economy, Ireland is particularly vulnerable to adverse shifts in the external environment.

Then there’s the question of how to allocate the budget surpluses. Tom McDonnell, co-director of Ireland’s Nevin Economic Research Institute, cautions:

Ireland’s bleak history of procyclical budgets and their consequences should warn us against making similar mistakes this time.

As with immigration, the economy will provide much for Ireland’s next government to think about. But perhaps Ireland’s leaders will prove WB Yeats to have been too pessimistic — the centre really can hold.

More on this topic

Paramilitary criminal gangs in Northern Ireland — a report by Una Kelly for RTÉ News

Tony’s picks of the week

• Israeli spies have a long history of using telephones, and their technological successors, to track and even assassinate their enemies, the FT’s Mehul Srivastava reports

• Russian citizens who permanently reside in Latvia but have failed the required Latvian-language exam have started receiving letters warning them to leave within 30 days or face “forced deportation”, Marija Andrejeva writes for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Stay informed with free updates

Simply sign up to the Life & Arts myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.

At first glance Jack Schlossberg seems like your average Ivy League lunkhead. Tall and handsome, his lanky six-foot-two frame has rangy athleticism, he boasts a thatch of hair that geneticists should task with study and he can always bust a camera-ready, doe-eyed, heartbreaker grin. He’s urban, he’s part of the liberal cognoscenti; he skates about the parks like a real New Yorker in his singlet, cap set backwards with its peak against his nape. 

Take a closer look, however, and you start to see the resemblance: the chiselled cheekbones, the glowering brow. He has all the hallmarks of his ancestral bloodline. Jack Schlossberg is unmistakably a Kennedy.

John “Jack” Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg was born in 1993, the youngest child of Caroline Kennedy and designer and artist Edwin Schlossberg. He is named after his maternal grandfather, the 35th US president John F Kennedy. Ted Kennedy was his godfather and great uncle. He bears an uncanny likeness to his uncle, John F Kennedy Jr, the attorney, socialite and publisher who died in 1999. Schlossberg was a ring bearer at JFK Jr’s wedding, and shares the same proclivity for writing and wearing not too many clothes.

Schlossberg has degrees from Yale and Harvard in history, law and business administration, briefly worked in the Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs and has turned his hand to journalism. He’s written for the Washington Post, New York magazine and People but his chief achievement since graduation has been creating content and cultivating his social media presence with a slew of TikTok films. Some half a million followers now tune in regularly to watch him singing ditties from behind the steering wheel, cogitating on the park run, providing “hot takes” about Big Tech and, increasingly, “memeing for democracy”.

Some observers might find Schlossberg a bit peculiar, his goofy brand of humour comes across as slightly odd. Watching him crooning feels like being on a Tinder date that you’d like to exit. And I think it’s a red flag he doesn’t like to shower, wash his hair or brush his teeth. But in spite of this, or perhaps because of it, the 31-year-old has been adopted to help explain politics to the young and disaffected. US Vogue signed him up as a political correspondent in July, while Kamala HQ has been using him as an interlocutor to get the vote out and energise Gen Z. 

His content is now pivoting away from moochy explainer videos to find him chatting deep dish pizza and policy with Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, hanging out with swing-state senators and doing porch-side interviews with major figures in the Democrat community. His access is formidable: most Democratic elders seem to treat him as you might a hyperactive nephew — an inevitable fixture whom you are fond of but sometimes wish would go away. Schlossberg carries with him the golden privilege of being a Kennedy. He may be a smelly skater-boi crossed with a puppy, but he’s still a scion of the mythic Camelot. He got the chance to remind everybody of that connection at the Democratic National Conference, in Chicago, during which he gave a two-minute speech. He told the assembly why his grandfather was his “hero”: because “he inspired a new generation to ask what they could do for our country. Today, JFK’s call to action is now ours.” 

Schlossberg may lead with a unique brand of “silly goose”, but of the current crop of Kennedys he’s probably the sane one. Few things are stranger than the spectacle of his cousin Robert F Kennedy Jr’s late career in politics: the now retired presidential candidate and Trump supporter revealed this week he is being investigated for collecting a whale specimen 20 years ago: he cut its head off with a chainsaw and then bungee-roped it to the family car. Following the brain worm, and the story of the dead bear cub (he planned to skin it but then dumped it in Central Park, you remember?), and an allegation of sexual assault (over which he apologised without admitting guilt), RFK Jr’s reputation for being a bit zany has now been reclassified as dangerously mad. 

Jackie Kennedy may have coined the expression Camelot to help mythologise her late husband’s presidency, but the myth gets ever stranger and more powerful by the year. One wonders whether a Kennedy can ever be an ordinary mortal or must always cultivate an outsize personality to live up to their famous name. Schlossberg is harnessing more statesmanlike authority while cruising on his hunky affability and adjacent fame. His schtick can feel as though it has been cynically workshopped to “play” with next gen voters, but at other times his uncensored edits seem spectacularly untamed. 

As a representative of Camelot 2.0 he ticks all the boxes. He’s politically aspirational, charming, non-confrontational and looks cute in a suit and in running shorts. For a voting sector that has been put off by the relentless negativity of recent politics, Schlossberg is the perfect spokesman: he sandwiches his easy-peasy calls to action — “vote blue” (hell, you don’t even need to know the names on the ballot), “reproductive freedom”, “don’t cry, vote!” — and then gets back to the stuff of life, like moonwalking in the supermarkets in his filthy dirty socks.

And, yes, he isn’t hugely funny, or even amusing, but he’s got that rare ancestral glow. Camelot 2.0 is the same but different and while our collective weakness for Kennedy connections might smooth his transition into more serious politics, as with so many of his brethren it’s hard to work out where the focus starts and the charisma ends.  

jo.ellison@ft.com

Find out about our latest stories first — follow FTWeekend on Instagram and X, and subscribe to our podcast Life and Art wherever you listen