New Statesman
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Space is an engine of UK growth and industry
It was one of Andy Burnham’s first statements as Prime Minister: “Britain reindustrialised, getting those good jobs back into all of our regions.”
Digital transformation: the path to a more efficient state
A report on how digital transformation can strengthen public services, build UK capability and spread economic opportunity across the UK
Exclusive: Greens’ radical plan for the economy revealed
Interest rates will no longer be used as the main means of controlling inflation under a Green government. That’s just one of the eye-catching proposals in a planned overhaul of the party’s economic policy, to be voted on by members at their conference in October and seen by the New Statesman.
Burnham ally to become Labour’s general secretary
Labour’s ruling National Executive Committee has chosen Joe Fortune as the party’s new general secretary. Fortune currently holds the same role in Labour’s sister party, the Co-Operative Party. His appointment will be ratified at Labour’s annual conference in Liverpool which kicks off next week.
2026 UK Pensions Guide
A comprehensive guide for savers looking to make the most of their money through pension planning
Oasis gave us permission to live
In 1994 I stood three feet from Liam Gallagher in a small dark room and watched him do almost nothing: hands behind his back, chin up, that adenoidal snarl pouring out of him. My boyfriend at the time was a photographer, one of the first to shoot Oasis, and he’d brought me along. He’d played me a couple of the songs, but really I was there for the ride.
The Thelma and Louise musical has nothing on the film
The question one should always ask when a beloved film is reimagined as a musical is: why? What is it about the musical medium that will take this story to another level? What’s being added here?
Britain needed Bonnie Greer
I remember the first time that I saw the late Bonnie Greer. It was on a television screen and she was doing one of the things that she did so brilliantly: talking about the arts. For me it was a complete revelation. Here was a black woman on national television discussing culture with complete confidence. It is easy to forget that 40 years ago British cultural pundits were all white, nearly all Oxbridge and nearly all male. But Bonnie could not have been more different.
Gordon Brown’s second act
At 75, Gordon Brown likes to joke that he is too old for British politics and too young for American politics. The line hints at the ongoing energy of the former prime minister who, more than 16 years after leaving office, still rises at dawn to bash at his keyboard with two fingers in the upstairs study looking out at the Firth of Forth from his home in North Queensferry, Fife.
The Big Security future
Mortal life is strange. Things change constantly, and we never know what the hell is going on. This feeling may be perennial, but there are variations from one era to the next. In our digital age, we contend with the dreamlike realities of Big Tech, in which venerable questions about the nature of reality and truth merge with debates about AI slop, deep fakes and the hallucinations of large language models (LLMs).
Holborn & St Pancras is the battleground of the British left
On 12 September, at two locations straddling Camden Road, the main contenders in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election held their campaign launches.
From the archive: Life under Cameron
In February 2010, the historian Dominic Sandbrook wrote a counterfactual “what if” column, imagining how the country might look in five years’ time if David Cameron became prime minister.
In Hove, I am a slob. But East Finchley has made me a gentleman
I am sitting in my mother’s kitchen late in the evening when I hear the peep of a whistle as a train emerges, half a mile away, from the tunnel just before East Finchley Tube Station. The noise is ancient, unchanged since my childhood; I’m amazed it endures. I find other surprising things from my youth here. A collection of poetry, written by me in the 1980s, which is also amazing in that it isn’t that bad, really. I mean it’s not great but it isn’t complete garbage, either, and that’s something.
How to eat like a Norman conqueror
It was nice of Emmanuel Macron to let us borrow it – the Bayeux Tapestry, or the tale of how the Normans (with some help from the Bretons and the Picards) invaded and conquered England, a short millennium ago. “Here you go, and don’t forget – it could happen again!”
Queen at Sea: a brutal masterpiece about the end of life
Do you want to see a truly bleak film about dementia and the end of life? Is it possible actually to enjoy such a production? Queen at Sea tells a simple story, despite its cryptic title. For there is no queen, no sea; it’s a gamesome way of suggesting, perhaps, what a noble mind is here o’erthrown.
After a delightful summer break, I am already in a state of anxiety
At what point does mere exhaustion over-end political analysis? Reading the editor in last week’s magazine on the collapse of millennial optimism and “the growing sense of emergency” in our politics, I realised that after a delightful summer break, I was again – already – in a state of heart-pounding anxiety. Contemporary politics is just so bloody tiring. Anti-migrant protests, amplified a million times online; the huge crypto donations to Reform; AI doom;
The death of Andy Burnham’s father reminds me of my own losses
It was early Monday afternoon when I heard the news about Andy Burnham’s father. I was on the way to meet my own father when the news flashed up that Roy Burnham had passed away after struggling with Alzheimer’s – a disease many of us are now acutely aware of.
The enduring brilliance of Ang Lee’s Sense and Sensibility
We are all Janeites now. Jane Austen mania reigns, with more film and TV adaptations rushing to our screens than ever before. We could credit the 250th anniversary last year of the author’s birth, the BookTok craving for romance, the solace provided in our cash-strapped times by Austen’s depiction of genteel poverty… or, for whatever reason, we wish now to revel in the sweet solidarities of her female-led dramas of sisterhood.
Can stuffed animal corpses cure my fear of death?
When my wife told me she was pregnant, I started thinking about death. More than ever, I needed to stay alive, to pay for my half of the child. Death mattered more, now that I mattered more, which meant my long-standing fear of dying had doubled overnight. I needed, my wife said, to repress that fear. And where better to deny the reality of mortality than the UK Guild of Taxidermists Annual Conference? All forms of art are an attempt to deny death: to enable the artist to live forever in another vessel.
Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon: America’s new anti-AI vanguard
“Let us be clear: artificial intelligence and robotics are the most transformational technologies in the history of humanity,” Bernie Sanders told the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington DC yesterday (15 September). He warned that these technologies pose enormous dangers: millions of job losses, a mass surveillance state, children with stunted minds, deepfakes deciding elections. Sanders was onto the issue early, having introduced legislation to pause data centre construction last year.
Wildfires don’t just burn, they choke
My brother messaged: “Just watching the news. Are you OK? Are the fires anywhere near you?” The last thing I’d anticipated when moving to British Columbia was being tangentially involved in a story broadcast in the UK.
Tartuffe review: Mark Rylance is delightful in a new adaptation
Love and religion: natural bedfellows? It’s a perennially evocative question, in which emotion and dogma converge, which has long been a source of beauty and conflict. This goes some way to explaining why Molière’s Tartuffe, a farce about hypocrisy, gullibility and false piety, has endured since its first staging in 1664 – despite Louis XIV banning it.
No one can agree about Naza
In the midst of the furious controversy surrounding Naza, a new documentary by Israeli co-directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the film has drawn largely predictable reactions within Israel. The film features accounts by Israeli soldiers and military insiders, who describe the mass killing of civilians in Gaza. It premiered earlier this month at the Venice International Film Festival, and, while it has not been seen by most of its detractors, it has been criticised for spreading lies and leaking legitimate classified information.
Drinking in Soho is a fundamental freedom
“Westminster City Council is NOT planning to stop you from standing up in the pub,” came the outraged response on X from the Westminster councillor Timothy Barnes in August, when the row over the proposed limit on “vertical drinking” in Soho first broke. The reporting of the suggested new licensing policy was, he said, “politically motivated” and “deliberately and knowingly misleading”.
Inside the Nord Stream conspiracy
At 2.03am on 26 September 2022, a seismic monitoring station on the edge of the Arctic Circle detected a powerful tremor at the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which was built to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany and ran along the seabed, registered a sudden loss of pressure.
Donald Trump’s last hurrah
Donald Trump wanted us to share in a collective delusion. On stage at the Republican convention in Dallas, Texas, looking out at a mass of empty seats, he was telling us that they were full. He could see the empty seats. We could see the empty seats. The television cameras could see the empty seats. But it did not matter. You’re meant to suspend your disbelief when Trump speaks.
Becoming a grandad, how to enjoy Labour conference and my mate the Prime Minister
There are some things in politics you never really expect to see. I guess your mate becoming Prime Minister is fairly high on the list.
Beer and Sandwiches: At Cross Keys Inn in Sedbergh
The Cross Keys Inn in Sedbergh, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, is an odd location for a column titled “Beer and Sandwiches” – because it doesn’t sell any alcohol. Located at the foot of the Lake District peaks’ gentler sibling, the Howgill Fells, the Cross Keys is a haven for hikers.
Anita Brookner’s view from the outside
An extraordinary novelist needs an exceptional biographer; only Hermione Lee can do Anita Brookner justice. The sheer scale of this biography is itself an expression of Lee’s high valuation of Brookner’s work: the former insists – and I agree with her – that the novelist is major, and matters for our literary culture.
Letter of the week: For one and for both
I – along with many others, recent polling suggests – applaud Ed Miliband’s action against the illegal and terrifying Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank (Politics, 11 September). Ailbhe Rea makes the important point that the Foreign Secretary “sees no contradiction between his support for Israel and his support for the Palestinian cause”.
Rupert Lowe confronts, dissects and destroys
Have you heard the one about the Christmas tree in Burton Green? Like some latter-day Wenceslas keeping his serfs’ spirits up, HS2 Ltd buys the Warwickshire village a community tree every December in acknowledgement of the disruption its new train line has caused. Or the one from 2016, when HS2 published a surprising new route that chopped through a housing estate in Mexborough, plans that were drawn up using maps from before the estate existed? It is not recorded how much this error cost. Or there’s the one about Whittington Heath Golf Club?
The vanity fair of 70 Up
The wise travelling vagrant, the adulterous East End cockney bounder and the prize posh shit – can the mess of life truly produce such clear, predictable, Thackerayan archetypes? Or do we project them on to real people, squinting the three-dimensional down to two? This was the question that I found myself asking after watching 70 Up, the final instalment of the celebrated television chronicle of everyday British life.
Will AI kill us all?
In the winter of 2022, millions of people around the world were having fun with a new chatbot called ChatGPT. But as the public marvelled at the new technology, the ministers and civil servants of the British government were busy imagining how it might go horribly wrong. Disasters were modelled. Meetings were held in the Cabinet Office in which officials asked each other if the technology could be used to attack democracy, or to create neurotoxins that would be released into the Thames.
Piddington’s treason
Two signs mark the entrance to Piddington, east Oxfordshire. “I AM SPARTACUS. YOU ARE SPARTACUS. WE ARE SPARTACUS,” reads one in blue and yellow letters. The other leans on a fence, bearing the words: “The Village That Roars.”
Sydney Sweeney has made a deal with the devil
How did Sydney Sweeney, the 29-year-old American actress of fluctuating talent, accumulate an estimated fortune of $40m? By knowing a bargain when she sees one. Bargains, that is, of the patriarchal kind – the sort the Turkish feminist Deniz Kandiyoti theorised in 1988. Her argument was that women can negotiate with patriarchal structures, rather than simply submit to or resist them. They extract what advantages they can: protection, status, money. You do not have to believe in the system, Kandiyoti writes, to make it work for you.
No one is safe from the political donations scandal
Andy Burnham’s Labour has generally been a calmer place since he took over. But over the weekend, a wave of panic rippled through his parliamentary party. In the Labour MPs’ WhatsApp chat, one backbencher shared the news that the crypto billionaire Ben Delo had donated £36 million to Reform UK. “Terrifying,” one Labour MP responded. “This money just fundamentally alters our chances of stopping Reform,” said another. “It’s just impossible to compete,” agreed a third. Then the second £36m donation came in.
Tax: the new front in the Reform-Tory war
Why vote Tory but not Reform? Why vote Reform but not Tory? These questions are of growing relevance to British politics the closer we get to a general election. There was a time not long ago when political commentators would happily add up the polling score for both parties, get a number in the high forties, and confidently declare that the future of British politics belonged to the right.
Farage’s fan club doesn’t care about scandal
The fallout from Reform’s latest scandal, John Healey’s first major speech as Chancellor and Ukraine’s plan to tax porn stars. Anoosh Chakelian and Will
Andy Burnham can’t explain the economy
Labour’s missing money metaphor, the millionaires still getting benefits and Dyson’s £420 toothbrush.
Whatever happened to the Good Friday Agreement?
Poor Micheál, who may have expected it from Joe Biden – that 20th-century Irish catholic. Of course a president prone to quoting Heaney and Yeats might display some favouritism to the Republic of Ireland. And there it was in 2020, hard proof: if Westminster screws up the invisible Irish border, Biden said, the Anglo-American trade deal is off. Chalk it up to the misty-eyed, Hibernian nostalgia of those East Coast, establishment Democrats. At least they remember the Good Friday Agreement.
The great British democracy sell-off
It has long been fashionable for politicians and commentators to worry about the “Americanisation” of British politics. Concerns of this nature date back more than a century, to debates about extending the franchise. Opponents argued that giving working people the vote would undermine sound economics and stable politics. The Liberal MP Robert Lowe told the Commons during the 1866-67 debates: “Everywhere…where the lower classes get the upper hand, the spirit of protection arises. Look at America.”
The lost past of 70 Up
What would Seven Up! look like now? That’s the thought I couldn’t get out of my head as I rewatched some of the series past highlights in preparation for the final instalment.
Ed Miliband resets relations with Israel
Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has unveiled the biggest reset in UK relations with Israel for decades, and, in typical fashion, is putting his stamp on his new role.
Burnham vs Badenoch: PMQs, round one
This week was Andy Burnham’s first in the Commons as Prime Minister, facing his inaugural head to head with Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.
China’s history is on the table
Fuchsia Dunlop discusses what she’s learned from a lifetime dedicated to eating Chinese food.
You don’t create growth by simply spending more
I often sit on the front bench listening to debates on business and economic policy, irked by the way politicians talk about how we grow our economy.
Zack Polanski’s honeymoon is over
It’s nearly a year since Zack Polanski took the reins of the Green party.
Government cannot live in fear of overseas shareholders
Andy Burnham wants to redesign and rebuild Britain. But outdated trade rules could stand in the way of the economic transformation he has promised.
We need a better way of deciding what constitutes worthwhile investment
Whatever their weaknesses – and they inevitably all have some – it is only right for a country to establish and follow a set of rules for fiscal policy.
Britain has a hidden advantage in the global AI race
National resilience has always depended on critical infrastructure. In the 19th century, it was coal and railways. In today’s artificial intelligence (AI) world, that will be determined by the infrastructure that powers AI.
Alexei Sayle: “Life as a leftist has been a complete failure”
Alexei Sayle has never much cared for a conventional view of the world.
Is Trump a Russian asset?
In 2011, Luke Harding was ordered to leave Russia – the first Western journalist to be exiled since the fall of the Soviet Union. As the Guardian’s senior correspondent, he continued to watch Russia from afar, covering WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden, and the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko. But in recent years he crept back closer to Moscow, reporting from the front lines of the war in Ukraine.
Is Britain a liberal country?
Most people would say that Britain is, by and large, a liberal country. Individuals have the freedom to express their individual beliefs, others are expected to accept this difference in opinion with a certain level of tolerance. Our government is decided by free and fair elections, we have a high level of personal freedom and protected rights.
Westminster’s new reading list
The reading habits of politicians, like their sexual proclivities, are largely hidden from public view until we are offered brief, revealing glimpses of their inner lives and sometimes unexpected private pleasures. In both cases, an intensely personal habit can acquire a profoundly public significance, and prove embarrassing if a journalist discovers the details. With reading, the ideas, arguments and topics politicians encounter on the page inevitably shape, to some degree, how they understand the world and then govern it.
The total victory of Uniqlo’s JW Anderson collaboration
“There is an earth-shattering moment in every white boy’s life when he discovers UNIQLO,” tweeted the prolific shitposter Donald Boat in April 2022. When I read it, I retweeted it unhesitatingly, because it was profound and true – not just for white boys, but for us all, though particularly for white boys. We must now acknowledge another earth-shattering moment. There is BU, before Uniqlo; AU, after Uniqlo; and AJWAXU, after JW Anderson X Uniqlo.
Reform has peaked
At Reform Party Conference this month, the only subject journalists wanted to talk about was the donor scandal. The day before the conference began, Channel 4 broadcast a documentary in which reporters secretly filmed senior party staffers apparently suggesting ways for a would-be foreign donor to get around electoral law. Two key Reform figures – James Orr and Dan Jukes – stepped down. The Metropolitan Police has now launched a criminal investigation over allegations the party broke foreign funding laws.
Andy Burnham’s growing pains
When Andy Burnham stood on the steps of Downing Street on his first day as Prime Minister, he pledged to build “a new economic model” for the UK. But if John Healey’s first speech as Chancellor of the Exchequer on Monday (7 September) is anything to go by – a finely calibrated exercise in Continuity Rachel Reeves – we should not be holding our breath that next month’s Budget will usher the new model in.