Keir Starmer’s opportunity in crisis
Donald Trump’s tariffs give the Prime Minister the political space to re-examine his government’s fiscal rules and Britain’s relationship…
ByThe Magazine
In this week’s issue
Spring Special 2025
Letter of the week: Pay as you learn
Write to letters@newstatesman.co.uk to have your thoughts voiced in the New Statesman magazine.
By
Rachel Reeves bans the A-word
Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.
By
What is Trump thinking?
The president’s tariff regime is driving the world to the brink of a trade war.
By
Taking on the manosphere death cult
Also this week: the need for thoughtful optimism, and finding restoration in Paris.
By
Adriana Brownlee: “As soon as you think of records, it gets dangerous”
The mountaineer on climbing the world’s highest peaks.
By
Adolescent masculinity is a puzzle much older than smartphones
What Stand by Me reveals about boyhood, and what Martin Amis and Julian Barnes taught me about life at…
By
The slow death of the Royal Mail is a parable of the modern British state
The British economy was most successful when it was run in the national interest.
By
The resurrections of Piers Morgan
Also this week: a brand-new Observer, and an expensive year for the world’s richest man.
By
How Gatsby deceived America
A century after its publication, the novel’s glory and brutality persist in the national psyche.
By
The magical thinking behind European unity
The far right will always be an impediment to strategic autonomy.
By
“Late adulthood” helped me reclaim retirement
I have decided to step down as dean of King’s College, Cambridge. A whole vista of reinventing, relaunching and…
By
The Easter Rising and the perils of mythology
The IRA wielded 1916 to legitimise their own campaign of violence in the Troubles.
By
What Russia can teach us
From Tolstoy to Shostakovich, Russian culture shaped Europe. We must not lose it.
By
To catch a strongman
How justice caught up with the Philippines’ brutal president Rodrigo Duterte.
By
Medicine’s profit motive
Big Pharma has the NHS in its grip – and patients are paying the price.
By
Steve Rosenberg: the last man in Moscow
The BBC reporter talks courting Putin, playing piano with Gorbachev, and the rising tensions of a nation at war.
By
The making of a political mind
Working at the New Statesman in the 1970s, I hid my impure voting record. But as I grow older,…
By
The music of resistance
When my Polish great-grandfather was arrested for defying the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz, he took two things with…
By
The realism of religion
A Christian revival won’t save the deluded West – but it might teach it to accept its fate.
By
How to think in the age of AI
In a world transformed by tech, philosophy is more vital than ever.
By
The solitary life of bees
In this dark and fearful spring, they just carry on.
By
The dark side of the Moomins
Tove Jansson’s beloved stories, which turn 80 this year, are not cute: they are angry tales of apocalypse and…
By
Jensen Huang: the man who powers AI
The entrepreneur’s microchip company Nvidia has fuelled a tech revolution, but his success is built on failure and suffering.
By
Katie Kitamura’s study of social dynamics
The novelist coolly examines how we interact with each other in a deeply unsettling story of reversals and doubles.
By
Capitalism (Taylor’s Version)
Swift is a self-made billionaire and the most profitable live musician in history. What can her ascendance teach us?
By
The best children’s books for Easter
From hidden jewels to good eggs, children will be delighted by these funny, moving stories.
By
Samuel Beckett’s art of reduction
In The Unnamable, the writer’s prose was stripped to the bone – and the bone itself boiled white.
By
The best books of 2025 so far
From urgent new fiction to the inside story of Keir Starmer’s Labour, the New Statesman picks the season’s essential…
By
NS Poem: Odysseus and Laertes
A new poem by Josephine Balmer.
By
Josephine Baker’s French exit
The singer-turned-spy is just one of many 20th-century artists who fled American racism and escaped to Europe.
By
David Hockney writ large
A huge retrospective gives the authorised version of this prolific artist’s career.
By
The Return examines Odysseus’s last act
Ralph Fiennes plays the hero as a warrior shamed by his deeds and suffering from PTSD.
By
Your Friends and Neighbours is doomed to languish unloved and unwatched
Jon Hamm’s Apple series could be a kind of cut-price update on John Updike’s Rabbit novels – if only…
By
Good Hang with Amy Poehler is breezy, funny and light
The comedian’s series was conceived in opposition to wellness and therapy-adjacent shows that promise to make us “better” people.
By
I am a long-lapsed Christian, but the rituals of Easter still draw me in
The cravings to fill the house with tulips and white narcissus are irresistible.
By
Easter eggs are a rip-off
Why do we always buy in to this annual mark-up?
By
Brighton and Hove buses are great
While others dream of Machu Picchu or Mandalay, I dream of Hangleton or Worthing.
By
Church and an all-girls school gave me great freedom to be uncool
Might we have been less competitive, less obsessed by body image, had our circle been diluted with boys?
By
This England: How do you steal yours?
This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain…
By
Subscriber of the week: David Skinner
Please email zuzanna.lachendro@newstatesman.co.uk if you would like to be featured.
By
Graydon Carter Q&A: “My hero is Bugs Bunny: there’s no one cooler under pressure”
The veteran magazine editor on a golden age for culture, Canadian hockey stars and Sgt Bilko.
By