A different kind of weather
The anti-complacency mindset that guided Labour in opposition has been taken successfully into government.
ByThe Magazine
In this week’s issue
Summer Special 2024
Letter of the week: Humans vs resources
Write to letters@newstatesman.co.uk to have your thoughts voiced in the New Statesman magazine.
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The power tussle: Sue Gray vs Morgan McSweeney
Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.
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The press doesn’t understand the public
The only institution to have had a more damaging election than the Tories was Fleet Street.
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Why I feel like a literary Gareth Southgate
Also this week: My part in the great IT outage, and trying to impress Keir Starmer.
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The vice-president vs Donald Trump
Is Kamala Harris up to the job?
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An elegy for Bidenism
Joe Biden has dropped out of the race. Will his successor embrace his populist agenda?
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Joe Biden inflicted avoidable chaos on the Democrats
The US president’s substantial patriotism was ultimately outweighed by his vanity.
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EU leaders are pushing the hard right to form a united front
Sidelining Giorgia Meloni may have unwittingly taught her how to work around the union’s rules.
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For those graduating this summer: consider the generations to come
A university education gives you disproportionate freedom, power and potential. It’s a real responsibility.
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Labour’s anti-intellectual moment
The past three decades have seen the Everymanification of British politics.
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The remoralisation of politics is long overdue
For common decency to prevail, we must understand the economic, social and psychological pressures that influence the way we…
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The 1924 Paris Olympics: when athletes inspired art
The Fitzwilliam Museum’s latest show highlights an era that saw the sporting and artistic worlds converge.
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Can Kamala Harris save America?
The vice-president is the Democrats’ last best hope of beating Donald Trump.
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Labour’s stormy summer
Britain is poised between hope and fear as Keir Starmer surveys the challenges ahead.
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The prison system is broken
Prisons inspector Charlie Taylor on jails failing inmates and society.
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The secrets of the heath
To see the beauty of these dwindling acres, you must focus on what is at your feet.
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Elon Musk wants us to have more children
Is demography the new front line of the culture wars?
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The fragile state
Why the British seem increasingly incapable of governing themselves.
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Marc Bloch: a warning from Europe’s past
According to Emmanuel Macron, the best analysis of the dangers facing the continent today comes from a French historian…
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Who’s offended by Virginia Woolf?
How the writer’s Tavistock Square statue became a battleground for her legacy.
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Stuart Weir: The editor who shaped a country
In 1988, the New Statesman’s campaigning leader devised Charter 88 – a call to arms that radically transformed Britain’s…
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Matt Pottinger: “We are now in the foothills of a great-power hot war”
The former US security official on what a second Trump presidency would mean for China, Taiwan and the West.
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Generation Not Yet
A quietly incendiary new book reveals why millennials, paralysed by doubt, are struggling to make the leap into parenthood.
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The NS Poem I: Suspensions
A new poem by Kathleen Winter.
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Romance on the run in the Old West
Kevin Barry’s new novel The Heart in Winter sets passion against violence on the brutal American frontier.
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Britain’s justice system is still failing women
A former judge reveals how the law is loaded against victims of rape and domestic violence.
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What the Tories did to us
The essay collection The Conservative Effect explores how theatrical short-termism and specious rhetoric defined 14 years of mis-rule.
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The NS Poem II: A Bit on the Side
A new poem by Craig Raine.
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The best children’s books for summer 2024
Find dreams of better worlds in new books for young readers.
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In search of a homeland
A personal story of myth, memory, Scotland and the longing for community.
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Slavoj Žižek’s war with the left
At 75, the “rock star” intellectual has alienated many. But is his politics a strange source of sanity?
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The inventor of the Renaissance
Four and a half centuries after his death, we still owe our understanding of art’s greatest period to Giorgio…
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Beethoven and the Romantic spirit
The composer’s Third Cello Sonata, an underrated masterwork, cuts up the musical form and reassembles it anew.
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About Dry Grasses is quintessential slow cinema
This Turkish film is deeply challenging, even boring at times. But it is pretty much a masterpiece.
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Piglets: ITV’s “offensive” police comedy
This series set in a police training academy is by turns laugh-out-loud funny and simply embarrassing.
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How to write for radio
What I learned as a judge of the Charles Parker Prize for best student audio feature.
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The volcanic earth of Santorini produces wine like no other
A profusion of minerals makes for an electrically dry profile.
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The body’s secret defence mechanism
Gareth’s aching stomach made a 999 call to his “abdominal policeman”.
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I am a natural sportsman while sedentary
The more tennis and football I played, the worse I got.
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I am in love with my tattoos
It’s not about wanting to be young again – it’s about having control.
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This England: The great escape
This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain…
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Subscribers of the week: Teresa O’Connell and Jonathan James
Contact zuzanna.lachendro@newstatesman.co.uk if you would like to be featured.
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Daniel Handler: Q&A: “My wife is too busy to paint my portrait”
The author on Grace Jones, making cocktails, and wanting to be a jellyfish.
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