Messiah Complex

Labour in the age of Trump

For Keir Starmer’s Labour government, the return of the Maga regime is a grave challenge.

Letter of the week: Motherhood vs Mother Earth

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

Badenoch two-footed tackles her own party on football governance

Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.

Trump’s mission to save TikTok

Neither security concerns nor the law matter to the new president. Do they matter to us?

An abomination of an inauguration

The Maga vs the tech broligarchs battle has begun.

Joe Powell: “Foreign wealth hollows out the community”

The Labour MP for Kensington and Bayswater on modern slavery, fighting corruption, and who owns London.

What is Labour in power for?

The government is failing, the Tories are out of ideas. Welcome to Britain in 2025.

Team Trump’s real feelings about Starmer’s Labour

From lagging defence spending to choosing Peter Mandelson as ambassador, the UK government is out of step with Maga.

Prince Harry settles with Murdoch – but who blinked first?

Also this week: Fox News wins the White House and TikTok’s fluffy image in the UK.

The sound of Auschwitz

A new documentary marking the 80th Holocaust Memorial Day tells the extraordinary story of the camp’s 15 orchestras.

How we misread The Great Gatsby

The greatness of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel lies in its details. But they are often overlooked.

The end of the old world order

Robert D Kaplan argues that in a time of uncertainty, we must resist radical change. But these cautionary tales…

The moderate voices of the English Civil War

A story of two friends who took opposite sides asks: does ideology always triumph over loyalty?

The radical women who made modern dance

A new book explores three generations of dancers who looked beyond the stage to turn movement into a tool…

From Andrew Janiak to Alison Wood Brooks: new books reviewed in short

Also featuring The Sound of Utopia by Michel Krielaars and The Secret Painter by Joe Tucker.

The monumental achievement of The Brutalist

Brady Corbet’s uncompromisingly long, high-concept epic about a Hungarian architect might seem pretentious – but it demands to be…

Prime Target: a show so preposterous it’s almost addictive

This Apple TV+ thriller is derivative and extremely silly. And yet no producer seemed to think: is this too…

Natalie Haynes and the classics as comfort blanket

The ninth series of this show is airing on Radio 4 – and it’s the perfect listen for bleak…

Vashti Bunyan’s second life

At 60, the singer released Lookaftering, her first album in 35 years – and sparked a career renaissance.

The lure of Scotch whisky lies in the dramatic landscapes of its home

But it’s human endeavour not soil, stone and water that makes the difference.

Thought experiment 6: Twin Earth

Different understandings of semantics expose the limitations of language.

I’m all for a plasterer who shows off his loadsamoney

There was something gleefully life-affirming about this pickup-owning character.

I search for myself in the fashions and faces of Eighties photography

The pictures make me smile. The people in them seem real and alive.

This England: Too much dough

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

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Markus Zusak: “You have to win by so much that they can’t take it off you”

The author on Neil Young and wanting to have watched Michelangelo create the statue of David.