The Great Housing Con

The hapless Mr Sunak

What the UK requires is a prime minister who can lead and inspire; what it has is a vacuous…

Letter of the week: Why Germany follows

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

Who will be Keir Starmer’s chief of staff?

Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.

How the Tories lost the Rod Stewart generation

The musician’s on-air rant has given voters permission to acknowledge all the ways the state is falling apart around…

Joan Bakewell’s Diary: living with cancer, and the age of the grandparent

Medical progress is making us live longer – and grannies like me are being turned to for free childcare.

Konstantin Kisin: “Being anti-woke isn’t making you happy”

The podcaster is the viral man of the moment. But does he really have anything to say?

The war in Ukraine will go on for years – and so will its consequences for Britain

We need to change our thinking: this may become an unresolved global conflict of a kind we haven’t seen…

Rishi Sunak’s inflation promise is absurd – and the electorate will not forgive him

It is a political error to target an aspect of the economy the government cannot control.

Your therapist shouldn’t be on TikTok

On social media, therapists are turning consultation room conversations into memes. It’s a sinister trend.

Robert Kaplan’s tragic realism

Haunted by his misguided support for the Iraq War, the American writer turned to tragedy to understand the delusions…

From Cariad Lloyd to Ayòbámi Adébáyò: new titles reviewed in short

Also featuring Tomorrow Perhaps the Future by Sarah Watling and Away From Beloved Lover by Dee Peyok.

Ghosts of the Cultural Revolution

Tania Branigan’s Red Memory shows how Xi Jinping’s China is erasing the violence and tyranny of Mao’s purges from…

What does Rick Rubin actually do?

The star producer’s supremely vague manual on creativity does nothing to explain his craft.

The myth of England’s “fair play” fetish

In sport and politics, the English boast that they always play by the rules – but history tells a…

Edward Hopper’s city of still lives

How the painter stripped New York of its disorder to reveal its inhabitants’ solitude.

First Aid Kit: “We realised constant touring was not a good way to live”

Johanna and Klara Söderberg on making music as sisters, the side effects of ambition, and taking a break from…

Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale is dismal, claustrophobic and sometimes cruel

Brendan Fraser’s performance as an obese shut-in could win him an Oscar, but this bleak, suffocating film is hard…

Russell T Davies’ Nolly is more than melodrama – it’s a social history

The story of the Crossroads actress Noele Gordon (played by Helena Bonham-Carter) becomes a metaphor for something bigger.

The UK’s rubbish-dump mafia

Radio 4’s Buried tells the story of “the astonishing crime you likely haven’t heard of”.

The irresistible romance and rituals of dinner parties

I could piece together a record of my life through the tables I’ve convened friends around.

During a meal at one of London’s finest restaurants, I put my life in mortal danger

By the time the sponge pudding arrived I was snapping my fingers at the risks and signed on the…

This England: Dad dancing

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

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Francesca Stavrakopoulou Q&A: “In my field, people often talk about doom”

The biblical historian on the government’s cruelty and The Last Temptation of Christ.