Leader: Labour’s epic humbling
After nearly a decade of austere and divisive Conservative government, the Labour Party has endured its worst general election…
ByNew Statesman Magazine
In this week’s magazine
Days of reckoning
Central Europe’s authoritarians show where an unleashed Boris Johnson could lead Britain
A party secures near-hegemonic power by building a wide electoral coalition. It purports to be centrist or conservative but…
By
The Prime Minister can’t keep his spending promises and deliver a hard Brexit, so what will he sacrifice?
Being appointed chief secretary to the Treasury is generally a sign that the prime minister has plans for you.…
By
Boris Johnson is a pagan whose singular character and embrace of risk sets him apart from his caste
No established politician in any European democracy has achieved over the past few years what Boris Johnson did in…
By
The Tories can deny IndyRef2 but the consequence will be to drive support for independence even higher
Boris Johnson is the dog that caught the airplane. He has broken every rule – from lying to hiding…
By
I used to think my vote was powerful, but after four disappointing elections I’m struggling to believe it
The first (and I’m not prepared to say last) time I stood in an election, I was 17. The…
By
The Blairites and then the Corbynites have led Labour into a dead end. But there is a way back
That Labour lost the Don Valley and gained Putney is emblematic of a larger problem. The crux of post-Brexit…
By
I’d have forgotten so much were it not for my diary, a 253-page Word document I’ve kept for six years
In 1 January 2014, I went to the local cinema to see The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and convinced…
By
Political scientists talk about low-information voters, but too much information causes problems too
I have never been very good at predicting how election campaigns will unfold, but in years past I could…
By
NS Recommends: new books from Ian Shircore, Richard Mabey and Alice O’Keeffe
So Brightly at the Last Ian Shircore Clive James’s recent death unleashed a tide of obituaries that stressed how…
By
States of the Body Produced by Love: urgent and lyrical
Nisha Ramayya’s first book is a welcome affirmation of the feminist power to be found in Hinduism. It reclaims…
By
The Penguin Book of Oulipo: a brain-bending experience
“If I ask you to write a story,” says the novelist Richard Beard, “you might find it impossible. But…
By
Car Park Life: a funny, clever memoir of car park exploration
“Retail car parks are created for the facilitation of purchases within the store,” writes Gareth Rees, “but they are…
By
Dickinson: the TV show that reimagines Emily Dickinson as an eye-rolling teenage girl
There’s a fashion for adapting the life stories of interesting women from the past, focusing on their struggles to…
By
Frédéric Pierucci’s The American Trap: a memoir of theft on an industrial scale
Earlier this year a select group of journalists was allowed into the office of Ren Zheng-fei, the reclusive founder…
By
The best films in cinemas this Christmas
Do you believe in Cats? A rumour began circulating online recently that there is in fact no film-of-the-musical-of-the-poems, and…
By
The best radio shows of Christmas 2019
There’s a chill and melancholy running through the best of the seasonal radio. Horatio Clare’s exceptional three-part piece of “slow…
By
Why the bleak midwinter is not as dull, cold and silent as it first seems
There is a place I like to visit at this time of year, a narrow plot of land at…
By
“That tooth’s got to come out,” the dentist says, with a prod. “Ho hit, herlock,” I reply
Unlike Boris Johnson on the campaign trail, I like to tell the truth. What to say, then, on the…
By
2019 in football
I am in Grenada, staying at the Calabash hotel, looking back at the season so far, but still watching…
By
We were told a Boris Johnson victory would spell the end of the NHS. How worried should we be?
Throughout the election campaign, the NHS was the biggest issue alongside Brexit. We were warned that a Boris Johnson…
By
Elif Shafak Q&A: “If I weren’t a writer I might be a happier person“
Elif Shafak was born in 1971 in Strasbourg and is the author of 11 books. In 2006 she faced…
By