The Fight Back

To govern is to choose

Keir Starmer’s premiership needs a defining mission around which it can rally both Labour and the country – and…

My night dancing with Nigel Farage

At Reform conference, Farage’s acolytes were triumphant, and tremendously drunk.

Lea Ypi: “Labour is committing political suicide”

The Albanian philosopher on No 10’s shift to the right on immigration, her grandmother, and that Spectator article.

My first week as Green Party leader

Also this week: the antidote to cynicism and listening to Clacton.

Rachel Reeves achieves the impossible

Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.

Lachlan wins Murdoch succession

Your weekly dose of news and gossip from journalism, broadcasting and beyond.

Letter of the week: Into the darkness

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

The soft left helped make Starmer – could it break him?

The government’s rightwards drift is uniting past ideological foes.

Trump has redefined the language of politics

Coarse language now makes politicians look authentic.

Why Angela Rayner’s tax bill was more important than Nigel Farage’s

Nigel Farage told an untruth about his house. But no one asks him to play by the rules.

Reform’s wall of silence in Nottingham is a glimpse into the future

Councils led by Nigel Farage’s party are a preview of what a Reform government would look like.

France rejects the medicine of austerity

The collapse of the François Bayrou’s economic agenda has tipped the country into political crisis.

We are defined by our desires

It’s little wonder we are so confused by them.

Dr AI will see you now

Human doctors may be fallible, but they have a tool that AI medicine will never have: judgement.

Jung Chang’s critical distance

In her sequel to Wild Swans, the exiled author reflects on China from her adopted British home.

The struggle for Greenland

As Elizabeth Buchanan’s new history shows, Donald Trump is not the first foreigner to covet the Arctic territory. But…

Do youth clubs still matter?

British youth clubs began as social experiments and ended up safe havens for creativity and culture. What happens when…

The quiet power of noble craft

James Fox’s stories of stonewalling and lettercutting take readers a world away from craft-shop kitsch.

The NS Poem: A Variation on “Panis Angelicus”

A posthumously published poem by John Burnside.

Arvo Pärt: the holy minimalist who defied the Soviets

Now 90, the Estonian composer has spent a lifetime crafting music of profound beauty.

The Girlfriend review: bizarre love triangle

This new TV adaptation is glossy, in thrall to the super-rich, briefly compelling, and ultimately disposable.

Armando Iannucci’s Strong Message Here can teach the government a lesson

With Labour reeling from Angela Rayner’s resignation and the rise of Reform, it’s going to need all the comms…

Dining at Big John’s favourite Chinese restaurant

Am I on the frontier of successful multicultural Britain?

Drug prescription in Canada reminds me how lucky the UK is

Both countries may share a love of Taste the Difference marmalade – but medication, not so much.

My fool-proof guide to getting a violent case of food poisoning

Remember: it only counts if you spend at least six hours wishing you were dead.

Marking my father’s birthday without him

Going through his things doesn’t bring him closer, it leaves me emptier.

This England: Best foot forward

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

February 1978: Clive James reviews the official biography of Leonid Brezhnev.