Going Under

Letter of the week: The hope for change

Email our contact form to have your thoughts voiced in the New Statesman magazine.

Leader: The unworthy Boris Johnson

Why our shameless Prime Minister is merely a symptom, not the cause, of the UK’s degeneration.

Prince Andrew and the false memory wars

The claim that sexual assault victims may be mistaken about their memories has become a political and scientific battleground.

John Simpson’s Diary: In Afghanistan food is scarce, poverty is spreading and fear is everywhere

The full savagery of the old Taliban hasn’t returned. But sanctions are causing immense suffering.

“We cannot adjudicate on the cause of someone’s death”: Chief statistician Ian Diamond on counting the cost of Covid-19

When the pandemic hit, the head of the Office for National Statistics became one of the most influential officials…

Theresa May’s Commons attack on Boris Johnson shows revenge in politics is a sweet vindication

The offences against decency that Boris Johnson commits stain the body politic. The Tory party must now act.

Putin’s aim is unchanged: to destroy the Ukrainian state, or turn it into a failed one

The Russian president is tired of waiting, so his game of blackmail may soon take a deadlier turn.

Joe Rogan captures the American mood, whether liberals like it or not

Rogan’s skill for channeling popular sentiment is one that his critics – notably Harry and Meghan – conspicuously lack.

The past is not a guide to the future, but remembering is still a vital act of defiance

Giving tours of parliament used to remind me of history’s biggest lesson: most people don’t learn from history.

1922: the year that made modernism

Ulysses, “The Waste Land”, Jacob’s Room: a year of radical experiments changed the course of literature.

The NS Poem: The Girl

A new poem by Genevieve Stevens.

How Nigel Farage became king of the trolls

From his Dulwich days to the EU referendum, the man who made Brexit has always been a lone provocateur.

Can Europe tame pandemonium?

Covid-19 brought the EU together — the crisis in Ukraine may now tear it apart.

Reviewed in Short: New titles by James Hamilton, Xochitl Gonzalez, Ben Rawlence, and Gulbahar Haitiwaji and Rozenn Morgat

Constable: A Portrait by Hamilton, Olga Dies Dreaming by Gonzalez, The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of…

The enduring chill of Schubert’s Winterreise

A work ahead of its time, the composer’s great song cycle meditates on all our disappointments.

Francis Bacon at the Royal Academy: visceral visions of man and beast

A new retrospective shows how the ruthless painter captured our animal instincts.

Joanna Hogg’s The Souvenir Part II lacks the toxic glamour of the original

This was always intended to be a film in two parts, but the second installment, a Bildungsroman, is a…

Pam + Tommy reminds me of porn: it’s boring, lifeless and full of erect nipples

Yes, this Disney+ series features a huge, animatronic penis. But why was it made? What’s it for?

Marian Keyes and Tara Flynn provide warmth and wisdom in Now You’re Asking

This agenda-free agony aunt podcast doesn’t set out to change the world – and therein lies its charm.

Why we should not blindly rush back to the way of life we consider “normal”

A marvellous new book about the Isle of Mull brought to my attention the opportunities for ecological reflection that…

It can’t schmooze GPs, so Big Pharma targets patients and politicians instead

Only doctors at the end of their careers can recall the lavish lunches, the balloon trips, the conferences at…

I’m not drinking and I can’t sleep. I wonder: am I living my best life?

This question prodded an existential nerve for two sober nights in a row, and I didn’t like the answers…

Up at 5.30am to file my tax return, I find a sort of diary in my spending

Trawling through a tax-year’s worth of bank statements shows me how what I choose to invest myself in has…

This England: Too hard to handle

This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain…

Email our contact form if you would like to be the New Statesman’s Subscriber of the Week.

Susan Golombok Q&A: “People often say the family is doomed. I disagree”

The Glaswegian academic on Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, her estranged grandfather, and new kinds of family.