In this week’s New Statesman, John Pilger returns to Vietnam and finds that the country’s last great battle is to keep at bay the forces that pour trillions into corrupt banks and wars while destroying the means of civilised life. Also this week, we feature a report by Rob Brown from Ireland, which has gone from Free State to failed state.
Elsewhere, in the politics column, Mehdi Hasan criticises Mervyn King, governor of the Bank of England, for straying into party politics.
And, in the economics column, David Blanchflower warns that the banking collapse spreading across Europe might soon be too big a mess for the bailout fund to clear up.
Also, don’t miss David Laws on why the Liberal Democrats rejected Labour, a riposte to Andrew Adonis’s review of his book last week, Rachel Cooke on what The Battle for Barking reveals, and Neal Lawson and John Harris on the future of centre-left politics.