#Newstatesman

When John Healey strode up Downing Street on the day Andy Burnham became prime minister, he looked like the cat that had got the cream. He was the first to be called into No 10, and outsiders knew it

Last week’s open letter in support of Sally Rooney, calling for the Terrorism Act to be amended to protect free expression, generated an extraordinary response. Not all of it has been positive, of cou

Tanjil Rashid argues that the removal of Sally Rooney’s books from sale is an assault on freedom of speech, and he is supported by a splendid list of signatories (The NS Essay and Cover Story, 23 Octo

Barack Obama looked out at the crowd and did not like the country that looked back. He stood in a high-school gymnasium in Detroit, with skinny arms and a helmet of silver hair, at a recent campaign e

The border guard with the M-16 slung across his chest looks very confused. He scans our group as we sit on the prison bus: 40 international volunteers here in the West Bank to help Palestinian farmers

Quite naturally, few of us spend our time thinking about whether the state provides adequate care when we die. It doesn’t,by the way. But this UK government must. The current fragmented approach to en

It’s hard to imagine Agatha Christie coming back as a ghost (supernatural interventions, in her novels, prove to be red herrings) but if she did, she’d be pleased: 50 years after her death, brand Chri

I will start by saying that I know I should expect a fish sandwich to taste like fish. I just didn’t expect it to taste this much like fish. Nul points to the poached salmon and spinach triangle, one

Back in 1978, I was living in Oxford writing a DPhil doctorate about Percy Bysshe Shelley. I was supplementing my student grant by teaching English as a foreign language for the Oxford Intensive Scho

Lance Oppenheim is suddenly a director to be reckoned with. Still only 30, he has made a series of innovative and acclaimed documentaries, from an early short about a long-term cruise passenger, The H

The smudged and weeping clown is a face well worn into our imagination, and it is almost too obvious an irony that so many of the greatest comedians led lives of tragedy. Matthew Perry, who died in 20

Things are coming to a head with my mother. It looks like the Finchley Memorial Hospital is ready to release her, if not into the wild, then into the protected environment of a care home. I goggle at

A red thread of violence runs through Mathias Énard’s novels. From the Balkan wars of Zone (2008) to the upheaval of the Arab Spring in Street of Thieves (2012) and a soldier fleeing the battlefield

I have spent much of the past week thinking about being Jewish. It’s not something I ever considered column fodder – but then, I didn’t think I’d find myself debating my Jewish identity and definition

The Budget delivered by Gordon Brown on 2 July 1997 was the first by a Labour government for almost two decades. In a broadly positive response in its editorial, the New Statesman sounded a note of wa

Humza Yousaf, author of Under Fire, an important and painfully honest testament, could never have flourished in Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, still less the Conservatives. As a proud Muslim and support

How do you make a topic that is vital yet (for the non-economist population at least) intrinsically dull sound fun and interesting? Why, put a pun in the title, of course! Thus, the three episodes of

The most significant big-picture take on this year’s Budget came before it was delivered, from the New Statesman’s Will Dunn: we would be a better-run, less hysterical political economy without Budget

On 3 November, Americans will head to the polls for the midterms. We will be publishing an episode for the next two Wednesdays, analysing the results. In this second episode, we ask: will voters use t

The revolution deferred. Deferred by economic circumstance, deferred by political inheritance. When he came to power in July, Andy Burnham promised a radical rewiring of British politics and an end to