In this week’s New Statesman, Owen Jones speaks to protesters at the St Paul’s Occupation about “the fastest-growing political force on earth”, now staging demonstrations in a thousand cities across the globe. Jones notes the distance of both the unions and the Labour Party from the movement, and asks whether it could be the progressives’ Tea Party.
In a guest-written Politics column, after the largest Tory rebellion against the government in living memory Conservative MP Jesse Norman insists that the party remains “remarkably united over the EU issue” and behind David Cameron, whilst Mark Leonard, director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, warns that the break-up of the European Union is quite possible and that a marginalised Britain makes it even more likely.
Meanwhile, Jonathan Derbyshire talks to South African lawyer and anti-apartheid campaigner Albie Sachs about the importance of “truth and reconciliation”, and Bryan Appleyard wonders whether the death of Apple’s chief executive, Steve Jobs, spells the end of America’s age of innovation.
All this, plus Kevin McKenna on freedom for Scotland, Edward Platt on J B Priestly’s Hull, Vivien Goldman on Britain’s history of female punks and Stuart Maconie on the 20th anniversary of Nirvana‘s Nevermind.