If Brexit is supposed to be a revolt against the elite, can we start with hereditary peers in the Lords?
“The cure for admiring the House of Lords [is] to go and look at it,” wrote Walter Bagehot in…
ByNew Statesman Magazine
In this week’s magazine
System failure
First Thoughts: Boris’s memory slips, a Brexiteer’s repentance, roll-up roll-up universities and a missed calling
Sometimes a cartoon says it all. In last week’s NS (page 19), Grizelda showed two small children in floods…
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The “will of the people” is not set in stone – a second referendum is the only way to heal the nation
A second Brexit referendum would be a gross betrayal of democracy, the Brexiteers cry. It would shatter the people’s…
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Jess Phillips’s Diary: Scorched earth in parliament, a hotline to Macron – and Phoebe Waller-Bridge for PM
I consider myself to be a pretty good storyteller. I can normally spin long drawn-out days in the Commons…
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MPs are united by two things: the desire to keep their seats after Brexit, and exhaustion
“Inadvertent parenting” is what happens when you are so ground down by the demands of looking after children that…
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Leader: Houses in disorder
For Britain, Brexit has been a humiliating and humbling process, but it has also been an illuminating one. It…
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Roger Scruton: “Cameron’s resignation was the death knell of the Conservative Party”
It was in Paris in May 1968, as French workers and students revolted, that Roger Scruton became a conservative.…
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Commons Confidential: Kate Hoey counts the cost of Farage
Colchester’s cocky Tory Will Quince was close to talking himself out of a job as a Department for Work…
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Why the world needs a new financial order
One recent morning, in Washington, DC, I joined international policymakers, business leaders and academics assembled for the International Monetary…
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How political controversy and memes made an unknown rapper’s song the world No 1
When the 19-year-old American rapper Montero Lamar Hill, aka Lil Nas X, released “Old Town Road” on 3 December…
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BBC Radio Four’s old fashioned, unsparing series of essays on the 1970s
A series of essays on the 1970s sounded best when talking about Richard Nixon’s demise (5 April, 1:45pm). I…
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Jessie Buckley makes a mighty impact in Wild Rose
Lady Gaga gave a spirited performance in A Star is Born, but it would have helped the film’s cause if…
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Jonah Hill’s Mid90s: a playlist first and a film second
Music figures heavily in Mid90s, written and directed by the actor Jonah Hill and set in the Los Angeles skateboard scene…
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The final episodes of Fleabag prove it is more than just a comedy
If Fleabag began its life as a scabrous comedy, it ended it by being barely funny at all. Devouring…
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Freak out: How the Chicago imagists broke the rules
If the official history of American art in the 1960s and 1970s is one dominated by pop and minimalism,…
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Billie Eilish, the pop star of Gen Z
Billie Eilish has a pleasing knack for confounding the gatekeepers of the music industry. The 17-year-old, who writes her…
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Max Porter’s Lanny is a story of our fraught relationship to the countryside
A missing child (the eponymous Lanny); a traumatised village; and a strange, chorus-like narration. Max Porter’s Lanny has rather…
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Why I’m unconvinced by the promise of the first increase in GP resources in a decade
The room was packed by the time I arrived. I took a seat and got my sandwich out. Lunch…
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The harmonica: the perfect instrument for the travelling melancholic to play
My time in the MacHovel is drawing to a close, and I must make plans. To this end, I…
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Under a railway arch in Vauxhall, Erasure’s Andy Bell talks about lust, loss and sensing stardom
When I heard that Andy Bell from Erasure was in a musical playing a character called Torsten the bareback…
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Choosing a wine can be overwhelming. So start with the familiar, and then wander
You don’t need your wine writer to point out the flaws in 21st-century capitalism, except when those flaws affect what’s in your…
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Lang Lang Q&A: “Playing music all the time makes me an optimist“
Lang Lang was born in Shenyang, China in 1982. A child prodigy pianist, he rose to fame at the…
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I’ve had 100 books published, but just as many rejected – including one about football’s origins
I have just had my 100th book published. Well, I have been at it a long time. I have…
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