The Great Stink

The Labour vibe shift

After 14 years of Conservative rule, world leaders, MPs, business and the media are preparing for a new political…

Letter of the week: Why we must make Putin pay

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

Esther McVey’s war on rainbow lanyards and homeless prisoners

Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.

Starmerism is not at war with Blairism

A focus on serving working people is the golden thread that connects Keir Starmer’s Labour and Tony Blair’s.

Going head-to-head with Lisa Nandy over Gaza

Also this week: sun, solar storms and climate anxiety, and protesting on a surfboard.

Mehdi Hasan: “We don’t value Palestinian life”

The combative Zeteo CEO and former MSNBC host on the media’s moral failures.

A whirlwind tour of Washington with David Lammy

Republicans like the “realism” but not the “progressive” part of the shadow foreign secretary’s doctrine.

Keir Starmer’s real mission: to overhaul how government works

Once in power, Labour’s challenge will be to build a system that functions differently enough for voters to notice.

The battle for the worst job in America

Donald Trump’s pick for vice-president will be the candidate who can most thoroughly abase themselves before him.

Joe Biden is deluded on Rafah

America’s policy on Gaza is based on an alternative reality.

How Take That helped me embrace middle age

Seeing Gary, Howard and Mark perform in Manchester revealed how friendships, freedom and fun evolve through life.

The strange death of conservatism

Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s first obituary of Tory England was premature – but now, he says, the party is beyond saving.

The curse of climate brain

Global warming is not only destroying our environment; it is altering the way we think and act – for…

A bloody American ancestry

Advancing through fear and violence, amassing wealth and power, the Blood dynasty embodied the untamed spirits of a young…

How hormones rule our lives

From sex to eating, birth to body temperature, our physical selves do what our chemical masters tell us.

From Hari Kunzru to Eugene Rogan: new books reviewed in short

Also featuring The Light Eaters by Zoë Schlanger and Cypria by Alex Christofi.

Hoard is a daringly original British film

Lewisham-born director Luna Carmoon has called her debut, about a young woman in foster care, “this thing that encompasses…

Bodkin is a very 21st-century media satire

The journalism jokes are the highlight of this comedy thriller, which pokes fun at the clichés of true crime…

Inside the strange story of the Midwest FurFest attack

Who is to blame for the chemical assault that hospitalised 19 members of the internet’s most derided subculture?

How apartheid shaped classical music

Four composers reveal the musical legacies of the regime – in South Africa and beyond.

In praise of Languedoc

It isn’t a lauded wine region – but it is one of France’s best.

What’s in the Lidl middle aisle: bargains, or rip-offs?

The slightly unhinged discount products of the middle aisle are entertaining – but also part of a very clever…

Parrot’s pint lost

A salutary tale of petty officiousness and a pub-dwelling tropical bird.

The drama and delight of chicks leaving the nest

I’m no birdwatcher, but I was glued to the garden, willing on the fledgling great tits like my own…

This England: Rabbit roundabout

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

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Craig Foster Q&A: “My theme tune? The sound of a whale’s ear bone”

The Oscar-winning documentary-maker on marine biology, invading isopods, and the regenerative power of nature.