Leaving politics behind on a liberating coastal wander
Also this week: A close encounter with Labour luvvies, and chaos at the British Museum.
ByMagazine
Britain’s tax delusion
It is useless to pretend that in a world of high public debt voters can be spared increased taxes.
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Nadine Dorries’ “Plot” to hijack the Tory party conference
Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.
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The Lionesses won’t sleep tonight
Even with the Prem to distract me, I am still anxious about how the England women’s team are coping.
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This England: Canine division
This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain –…
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From Daljit Nagra to Charlie Porter: new books reviewed in short
Also featuring National Dish by Anya von Bremzen and Metropolitan by Andrew Martin.
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Letter of the week: Curriculum for transformation
Write to letters@newstatesman.co.uk to have your thoughts voiced in the New Statesman magazine.
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Inside a cupboard, I found the solace of solitude
Hiding among waxy coats and mud-encrusted boots, I spent two blissful hours without my phone and the internet.
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Britain’s great tax con
The UK’s tax system entrenches inequality, stymies growth, and rewards a few at the expense of the many.
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Death of a warlord
Yevgeny Prigozhin’s assassination won’t help Russia’s flailing war effort in Ukraine.
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Danny Kruger: “The moral condition of England is worse”
The MP and former political secretary to Boris Johnson reflects on the Tories’ decline.
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The revenge of Theresa May
In a forceful account of political scandals and injustices, May skewers her enemies and owns her mistakes.
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Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny: a feeble last crack of the whip
The Harrison Ford franchise that began with spectacle and wit has ended with a dull, predictable, CGI-laden dud.
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London’s charming India Club is closing, and I feel bereft
A modest candle of quirkiness and affordability has been snuffed out, so the capital can have another luxury hotel.
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A comic story of Britain
This history of comedy contains much moralising – but the best creations transcend the monstrousness of their characters.
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The Woman in the Wall turns the Magdalene laundries into offensive melodrama
Ireland’s unfathomably cruel “mother and baby homes” are here just as set-dressing for a shlocky horror – as if the…
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Róisín Murphy’s Q&A: “Mo Mowlam was everything you’d want a politician to be”
The musician on the former secretary of state for Northern Ireland, her love of the Sopranos and being painted by…
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Zadie Smith: the reluctant historical novelist
The author’s first period piece, The Fraud, is curiously absent of her usual strengths. Was her heart really in it?
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In The Last Waltz it’s Joni Mitchell who mesmerises
Martin Scorsese’s film may be about the Band, but when Joni plays you feel the confidence burning off her like…
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Passages is Ira Sachs’s “horny film”
The director’s art-house film concerns a catastrophic ménage-a-trois.
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