Labour’s tax illusion
The world has changed, and policy must change with it.
ByThe Magazine
In this week’s issue
Putin’s Endgame
Letter of the week: Debasing the database
Write to letters@newstatesman.co.uk to have your thoughts voiced in the New Statesman magazine.
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“John Swinney is no Jack Sparrow”
Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.
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“Adolescence” isn’t shocking
There is nothing fictional about the Netflix series – it simply depicts the world women have to live in.
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What diplomats really think of our leaders
Also this week: Doing the plank with David Cameron and Shakespeare in the age of AI.
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Mark Fairhurst: “I do not fear the law. I will accept the consequences”
The national chair of the Prison Officers’ Association on the next prison officers’ strike.
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As the literary novel fades from relevance, James Graham is the writer for our era
The author of Dear England has channelled the people and events that made modern Britain.
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The White House’s leaked group-chat disaster
Also this week: Rachel Reeves’ digital tax delusion and X as an arm of US foreign policy in Turkey.
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How gender ideology corrupted government data
Blurring the line between sex and gender has serious consequences.
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The Democrats’ toothless resistance
Liberals’ moral outrage only masks their allegiance to an amoral status quo.
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The EU is becoming an engine of war
Building the union was never a “peace project”. But European hard power is now its leaders’ greatest priority.
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Peacekeepers in a world without peace
What is the point of Keir Starmer’s “coalition of the willing”?
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Putin’s endgame
With a fractured West and a pliable US president, he sees no reason to abandon his war on Ukraine.
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The special needs trap
What one parent’s experience reveals about a system on the brink of collapse.
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Norman Lewis’s secret 20th century
In wartime Naples or Castro’s Cuba, the inconspicuous writer-traveller was a vivid chronicler of unseen worlds.
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The NS Poem: Facebook Marketplace
A new poem by Andrew McMillan.
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Abdulrazak Gurnah’s lessons in humanity
Theft, the Nobel Prize winner’s new novel, is full of wisdom and free of judgement.
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The Yoko Ono problem
As David Sheff’s new biography reveals, decades of suspicion aimed at the provocative artist, musician and widow have obscured…
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The cyclical history of abortion rights
The past has been marked by periods of acceptance and intolerance of women’s bodily autonomy. Can it offer lessons…
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From Russell Shorto to Xiaolu Guo: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring Affairs: True Stories of Love, Lies, Hope and Desire by Juliet Rosenfeld and The Story of Witches:…
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Munch the social animal
The painter’s portraits reveal less a tortured loner than a man who thrived in company.
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The fascist afterlife of The Four Seasons
Vivaldi’s masterwork, forgotten after his death, found new popularity when it was co-opted by Italian nationalists.
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Joshua Oppenheimer’s surreal apocalyptic musical The End
This strange film, starring Tilda Swinton, satirises our collective delusion in the face of the climate crisis.
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This City Is Ours: a highly superior Scouse Dallas
This series, starring Sean Bean, is the perfect combination of menace and farce. And the accents, the clothes, the…
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Tax doesn’t have to be boring
Dan Neidle’s Radio 4 show Untaxing reveals how our system is failing us – through the parable of Jaffa…
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Why the once-maligned egg is now ubiquitous
Fears of high cholesterol and salmonella created a culture of distrust that took years to crack.
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Thought experiment 9: Mary’s Room
The Australian philosopher Frank Jackson used the tale of a colour-deprived prodigy to argue for a world beyond the…
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In defence of cabaret-style seated gigs
There’s something about crowding round tables at a concert that conjures conversational magic.
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I gave up on a work ethic at school and never looked back
I’ve been fighting the grind ever since I was first given homework.
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This England: Well, this is hawkward…
This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain…
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Subscriber of the week: Kevin Hanson
Please email zuzanna.lachendro@newstatesman.co.uk if you would like to be featured.
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Anne Sebba Q&A: “A spark of humanity is enough to ignite the will to live”
The author on Ernest Shackleton as maverick and a year in Rome in 1972.
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