Keir Starmer’s opportunity in crisis
Donald Trump’s tariffs give the Prime Minister the political space to re-examine his government’s fiscal rules and Britain’s relationship…
ByThe Magazine
In this week’s issue
Spring Special 2025
Letter of the week: Pay as you learn
Write to letters@newstatesman.co.uk to have your thoughts voiced in the New Statesman magazine.
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Rachel Reeves bans the A-word
Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.
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What is Trump thinking?
The president’s tariff regime is driving the world to the brink of a trade war.
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Taking on the manosphere death cult
Also this week: the need for thoughtful optimism, and finding restoration in Paris.
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Adriana Brownlee: “As soon as you think of records, it gets dangerous”
The mountaineer on climbing the world’s highest peaks.
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Adolescent masculinity is a puzzle much older than smartphones
What Stand by Me reveals about boyhood, and what Martin Amis and Julian Barnes taught me about life at…
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The slow death of the Royal Mail is a parable of the modern British state
The British economy was most successful when it was run in the national interest.
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The resurrections of Piers Morgan
Also this week: a brand-new Observer, and an expensive year for the world’s richest man.
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How Gatsby deceived America
A century after its publication, the novel’s glory and brutality persist in the national psyche.
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The magical thinking behind European unity
The far right will always be an impediment to strategic autonomy.
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“Late adulthood” helped me reclaim retirement
I have decided to step down as dean of King’s College, Cambridge. A whole vista of reinventing, relaunching and…
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The Easter Rising and the perils of mythology
The IRA wielded 1916 to legitimise their own campaign of violence in the Troubles.
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What Russia can teach us
From Tolstoy to Shostakovich, Russian culture shaped Europe. We must not lose it.
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To catch a strongman
How justice caught up with the Philippines’ brutal president Rodrigo Duterte.
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Medicine’s profit motive
Big Pharma has the NHS in its grip – and patients are paying the price.
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Steve Rosenberg: the last man in Moscow
The BBC reporter talks courting Putin, playing piano with Gorbachev, and the rising tensions of a nation at war.
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The making of a political mind
Working at the New Statesman in the 1970s, I hid my impure voting record. But as I grow older,…
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The music of resistance
When my Polish great-grandfather was arrested for defying the Nazis and sent to Auschwitz, he took two things with…
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The realism of religion
A Christian revival won’t save the deluded West – but it might teach it to accept its fate.
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How to think in the age of AI
In a world transformed by tech, philosophy is more vital than ever.
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The solitary life of bees
In this dark and fearful spring, they just carry on.
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The dark side of the Moomins
Tove Jansson’s beloved stories, which turn 80 this year, are not cute: they are angry tales of apocalypse and…
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Jensen Huang: the man who powers AI
The entrepreneur’s microchip company Nvidia has fuelled a tech revolution, but his success is built on failure and suffering.
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Katie Kitamura’s study of social dynamics
The novelist coolly examines how we interact with each other in a deeply unsettling story of reversals and doubles.
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Capitalism (Taylor’s Version)
Swift is a self-made billionaire and the most profitable live musician in history. What can her ascendance teach us?
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The best children’s books for Easter
From hidden jewels to good eggs, children will be delighted by these funny, moving stories.
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Samuel Beckett’s art of reduction
In The Unnamable, the writer’s prose was stripped to the bone – and the bone itself boiled white.
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The best books of 2025 so far
From urgent new fiction to the inside story of Keir Starmer’s Labour, the New Statesman picks the season’s essential…
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NS Poem: Odysseus and Laertes
A new poem by Josephine Balmer.
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Josephine Baker’s French exit
The singer-turned-spy is just one of many 20th-century artists who fled American racism and escaped to Europe.
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David Hockney writ large
A huge retrospective gives the authorised version of this prolific artist’s career.
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The Return examines Odysseus’s last act
Ralph Fiennes plays the hero as a warrior shamed by his deeds and suffering from PTSD.
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Your Friends and Neighbours is doomed to languish unloved and unwatched
Jon Hamm’s Apple series could be a kind of cut-price update on John Updike’s Rabbit novels – if only…
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Good Hang with Amy Poehler is breezy, funny and light
The comedian’s series was conceived in opposition to wellness and therapy-adjacent shows that promise to make us “better” people.
I am a long-lapsed Christian, but the rituals of Easter still draw me in
The cravings to fill the house with tulips and white narcissus are irresistible.
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Easter eggs are a rip-off
Why do we always buy in to this annual mark-up?
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Brighton and Hove buses are great
While others dream of Machu Picchu or Mandalay, I dream of Hangleton or Worthing.
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Church and an all-girls school gave me great freedom to be uncool
Might we have been less competitive, less obsessed by body image, had our circle been diluted with boys?
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This England: How do you steal yours?
This column – which, though named after a line in Shakespeare’s “Richard II”, refers to the whole of Britain…
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Subscriber of the week: David Skinner
Please email zuzanna.lachendro@newstatesman.co.uk if you would like to be featured.
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Graydon Carter Q&A: “My hero is Bugs Bunny: there’s no one cooler under pressure”
The veteran magazine editor on a golden age for culture, Canadian hockey stars and Sgt Bilko.
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