The Emperor

Can Mary Barton save Britain’s badgers?

Parliament’s longest-standing protester is fighting to end the culls – but Labour’s Steve Reed is biting back

Revolution is in the air

We must look squarely at the world as it is, in all its complexity – from migrant camps to…

On patrol with Labour’s Mike Tapp

The migration minister is hawkish on protecting Britain’s borders – but rejects Reform’s politics of division

Why I always make time to dream

Also this week: Empowering artists to challenge tyranny, and a bumper year for apples

Keir Starmer: the Downing Street terminator

Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster

Letter of the week: Who truly believes in Britain?

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

Powell vs Phillipson is an old battle reborn

Soft leftism is colliding with the spirit of early Blairism.

The living hostages have returned, but Israel is divided

The capture of so many civilians on 7 October transformed Israeli society’s sense of itself

How dating apps killed romance

As swiping wanes, people are searching for connection where it’s always existed: in real life

An audience with Austria’s “rebel nuns”

The elderly sisters who defied Church authority are paragons of speaking truth to power

The prophecies of Paul Kingsnorth

In his new book, Against the Machine, the former ecologist blames technology for the coming climate apocalypse

The art of writing about India

In her first novel since she won the Booker prize two decades ago, can Kiran Desai avoid resorting to…

Wolf Moon and the fight against Franco

Julio Llamazares’ 1985 novel – newly translated in English – is a refusal to forget the brutality of the…

Chris Kraus’s autofictional crimes

Is the American writer’s new book, The Four Spent the Day Together, a true-crime novel or a description of…

Wayne Thiebaud’s slices of Americana

The painter’s neon-lit patisseries and pies captured the abundance of the US in the postwar decades

After the Hunt offers debate but no engagement

Luca Guadagnino’s talky Me Too drama sacrifices interest to academic point-scoring

Victoria Beckham’s needlessly boring TV makeover

The singer-turned-designer’s new documentary is a surface-level retelling of an otherwise fascinating life

The Importance of Being Hyper-Earnest

Max Webster’s queer reimagining of the Oscar Wilde classic is an explosion of conflicting performances

London’s pizza scene is in search of a soul

We are in danger of confusing skill with flair

What Victorian home-building did for us

Politicians who want to solve the housing crisis should look to the 19th century

People keep offering me pianos

It is a shame, then, that I play music as if I am missing three fingers

In front of the sound desk, a little off-centre

I find myself in tears at a Self Esteem show – a few shed for her brilliant lyrics, others…

This England: Black swan event

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

June 1964: The poet and critic Donald Davie reflects on the genius of John Clare