Labour in free fall

Will the crises ever go away?

Britain is struggling to maintain its spirit of quiet optimism

Who spies for Russia in parliament?

Reform MPs were conspicuous by their absence at a debate on malicious “Russian influence campaigns”

In Bicester Village, England is for sale

The outlet is the second most popular attraction for Chinese tourists visiting the UK

Driving in Ukraine’s anti-drone corridors

Also: Peter Mandelson for beginners, and cold comfort in Kharkiv

What Gordon Brown told me about Mandelson

Also this week: crumpets for John Major, and the hypocrisy of Nadine Dorries

Letter of the week: Principles paired with praxis

Write to [email protected] to have your thoughts voiced in the New Statesman magazine

Keir Starmer’s silver lining

The PM has been saved from the brink of peril

Can American democracy survive Trump?

The president is manoeuvring to delegitimise the November midterms

The Epstein files prove the MeToo backlash went too far

We have forgotten the omnipresence of misogyny

The truth about immigrants and sex crime

Corrosive innuendo about asylum seekers is helping no one

The dark side of the Enlightenment

Capitalism is far from the only extractive force in human history

Syria, from the Ottomans to al-Qaeda

The country is still haunted by a long and fractured past

Love in the time of AI

Young people are turning to AI chatbots for relationships they can’t find in the real world

Dirty realism goes supernatural

The writer’s new novel Vigil suffers from its ambition

The NS Poem: If No One Turns

A new translation of Rabindranath Tagore by Joe Winter

Chomsky against Foucault against Dworkin – who cares?

Ideas overpower meaning in Sophie Ward’s packed novel

Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is porn

The blockbuster reveals more about the psyche of the director than of Brontë

Lord of the Flies is not for children

Jack Thorne has given William Golding’s novel the Adolescence treatment

Arcadia is Tom Stoppard at his finest

The latest revival refuses to dumb the famously difficult play down

Arsenal fans are not needy! They just want an expensive lunch 

Their vilification as effete elitists is undeserved

Finally, a vape that doesn’t make me cough my lungs up

But I’ve already lost it somewhere in my bed

The student loan rebellion is only just beginning

A society which punishes its bright young things cannot expect to succeed

Beer and sandwiches: At the Angel Inn in Durham

This column is our weekly pub review, written by pintsmen, women and children across the nation. Suggestions to [email protected]

1963: A sleazy sex scandal blights the government