Leader: The burning world
Should governments continue to prevaricate over the climate crisis, future generations will not forgive them.
ByNew Statesman Magazine
In this week’s magazine
The age of conspiracy
Downing Street wants an election before a no-deal Brexit happens. But will it get what it wants?
August is traditionally a quiet month, not only in parliament – which is shut for the long summer recess…
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First Thoughts: Beware US trade deals, the death of New Society’s Paul Barker and why the lights go out
We should be wary of assurances from the hawkish White House aide John Bolton that, after a no-deal Brexit,…
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Lynn Barber’s Diary: Why Devon seems so foreign, new Scrabble words and why vicars should stick to God
I’m always being told I should travel more and go to foreign parts but crikey, I’ve just spent a…
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Why Labour must once again become the party of the British Union
The Labour leadership’s moment of truth over Brexit has become inseparable from the party’s relationship to the Union. John…
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From influencers to couples, childless millennials are obsessed with going to Disneyland
It all started with a mouse-shaped pretzel. When a mother saw a young woman in “very SLUTTY shorts” buying…
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Why Paul McCartney couldn’t believe that he’d actually written “Yesterday”
I recently went to see Richard Curtis’s Yesterday. Just in case I’m the only person in the world who knows…
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Cruel optimism: how Boris Johnson’s cabinet weaponised positive thinking
Something I have thought about a lot since our current Prime Minister was elected are those motivational quotes that appear on fridge…
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Commons Confidential: Leadsom’s leakers
With their foreign jollies summarily cancelled, there’s no such thing as summer for spads chafing under the yoke of…
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Minette Batters: Brexit has been “a face-slapping moment” for farming
Minette Batters could not have chosen a more difficult time to become the first female president of the National…
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Why the rise of Boris Johnson is the last laugh of a decaying elite
Boris Johnson has said and done some horrifying things during his political career. He has called Muslim women “letter…
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How new sport website the Athletic is disrupting Fleet Street
On 5 August, in anticipation of the start of the new Premier League football season, the American sport website…
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Jia Tolentino’s Trick Mirror: a terrifyingly astute analysis of our “unlivable hell“
In Naomi Wolf’s 1990 book The Beauty Myth, a woman walks into a department store. “To reach the cosmetics…
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NS Recommends: New books from Clare Pollard, Jericho Brown, and Livia Franchini
Fierce Bad Rabbits Clare Pollard “Opening a picture book from your childhood can be dangerous,” Clare Pollard warns of…
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Tree at the Young Vic: a self-aware but superficial exploration of African heritage
The evening started well. For Tree, the “immersive theatre experience” crafted out of Idris Elba’s 2014 concept album Mi Mandela, the…
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In Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood, amiable nostalgia gives way to unbearable suspense
Quentin Tarantino’s Second World War thriller Inglourious Basterds began with a line that was redolent of a child’s fairy…
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Is Succession the best thing on television?
Whenever I hear the Succession theme tune, at once so funereal and so jaunty, I feel as if I’m…
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An excellent BBC radio documentary takes the listener behind the scenes of The Dark Crystal
Radio programmes about the “creative process” are so often fatally underpowered, skirting round the edge of banality as any…
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As Brexit looms, Brits may be about to lose out on European wines. But English wine is on a winning streak
The English have never been short of reasons to drink, what with our climate, our rulers and the isolation…
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My virtue is tested by Mr Ginger Beard and a bottle of Coke from WHSmith on the train
To London, to have lunch with the children and catch up with some old friends I haven’t seen for…
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The new book magazine with 30,000 words per issue – written entirely by one man
Just over a year ago Ed Needham, former managing editor of Rolling Stone and editor of Maxim and FHM,…
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I wasn’t sure why Alan suffered abdominal pain – but I knew cans of fizzy pop weren’t to blame
lan’s abdominal pain had begun less than two hours previously. After 10-15 minutes it had become bad enough to phone 111,…
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Marika Hackman Q&A: “Kathy Acker changed my creative outlook“
Marika Hackman was born in Hampshire in 1992. She started playing the drums aged ten and guitar aged 12,…
By Leader: The burning world
Should governments continue to prevaricate over the climate crisis, future generations will not forgive them.
By
Surgical stitch-up: meet the placebo surgeon
Could the placebo effect work in surgery? When a doctor wanted to investigate – by opening patients up but…
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When the human tide ebbs
Global population boom may now be turning to population bust. The consequences, for better or worse, will shape our…
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Will the Independent Group succeed?
If the Brexit crisis triggers an early election, it could wipe out the new group before it can establish…
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