Life and Fate

The delusional joy of Labour conference

Britain might not be broken, but that does not mean the status quo is functioning

At Labour conference, the main character was Farage

Labour MPs couldn’t stop talking about the absent Reform leader

Zack Polanski: “We absolutely need to stop the boats”

The Greens’ Zack Polanski on facing up to Reform

The good fortune of growing older

Also this week: City kids on country farms, and keeping on lurruping

Wes Streeting is on the charm offensive

Your dose of gossip from this year’s Labour Party Conference in Liverpool

Letter of the week: It takes more than a mayor

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

Starmer has not yet proved he can solve our quicksand politics

Our political system is that we make huge mistakes, and then reverse them to make mistakes in the opposite…

Shutting down the American government will not save the Democrats

The party elite are listless and in denial. To inspire voters, they need street-fighters from outside the Beltway

For Tony Blair, Gaza is the future

The former prime minister has unfinished business in the Middle East

What it’s like to be Jewish in Britain now

The war in Gaza has exposed a level of anti-Semitism I didn’t realise was there

Gore Vidal: American prophet

The writer understood better than anyone how far the United States was going to fall

Annie Ernaux’s clinical self-examination

In The Other Girl, the writer is as objective about her life as she is the act of writing

The liberating power of vodou

Slave risings across the Caribbean, argues Sudhir Hazareesingh’s new book, drew less on Enlightenment ideas than African spirit lore

The terrible contradictions of Tolstoy

Maxim Gorky’s reminiscences about his literary hero are just as avant-garde today as they were in the 1920s

How Charlie Brown captured the American psyche

Charles Schulz’s beloved Peanuts series was more than just a comic strip – it was America’s conscience

A House of Dynamite implodes in its third act

Kathryn Bigelow’s latest action film is nicely edge-of-the-seat – until Idris Elba makes his appearance

The Hack is missing its heart

Jack Thorne’s News of the World phone-hacking ITV drama dulls the astonishing scandal

The Bacchae is more cringe-inducing than clever

Indhu Rubasingham’s debut as artistic director of the National Theatre tries to bring girlboss feminism to Euripides

Can this curry make Britain less depressed?

I am searching for a cure to the national malaise at a Thai café on the peripheries of Soho

Would you survive a year as chancellor?

Cosplaying Rachel Reeves for fun, I just about managed to avoid crashing the economy

I’ve had a disappointing week, salvation-wise

I am neither the infidel, and nor do I find myself in heaven

My father’s car of 27 years has reached the end of the road

It is another piece of Dad that has gone; another piece of the world that was that is now…

This England: Hi-de-Who?

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

March 1969: One great poet on another – Larkin on Tennyson