8 May 2000
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From the Editor…
Welcome to the New Statesman website. Whether you are a new reader or an existing one - online or via the magazine - I hope you'll enjoy the great writing, fresh ideas and provocative debate that make the New Statesman Britain's award-winning current affairs weekly
Cover story
The tiny group that controls us all
Nick Cohen pursues new Labour's elite and finds it struggling to understand the country's democratic conventions
Features
Now Hague can set the political agenda
Simon Heffer sees hope for the Tories if their leader can sound like a 19th century Manchester liberal
Gays should come to live in Yorkshire
Aidan Rankin speaks up for the provinces where he can still be just "not the marrying kind"
Raging against the machine of state
Can the music magazine NME get its readers back by going political, asks Duncan Parrish
Why we love those wise Big Women
Maddening and magnificent, a handful of female icons will always fascinate us. Geraldine Bedellpays tribute
Land of the cow and the techie
India is a third-world power that can feel first-world status within its grasp. It may be ready to use nuclear weapons in order to prove it, reports John Lloyd
Ministers should learn old lessons
Was a teaching career ever fashionable? Just once, as Leonard Marshwistfully recalls
The ballot box gets a pounding
New Statesman Scotland
The best-laid schemes of lefties
New Statesman Scotland - Robert Burns as a hero of the left is built on the myth that he was an 18th-century Che Guevara. But he was actually an Establishment figure
The dangers of Balkanised politics
New Statesman Scotland - If you're a Tory, should you take your problems to a Tory MP? That's the logic of electoral reform. Sandra Osbornethinks it is bad for democracy
Samuel Smiles
New Statesman Scotland
Primary Tartan
New Statesman Scotland
Regulars
Arts & Culture
Wrestling: the mania is back
Millions of us are tuning in to watch imported American wrestling extravaganzas. Scott Lucas argues that what we're really seeing is the unfolding drama of US power politics
Noise-worthy
Design - Hugh Aldersey-Williams on a booming industry
Urban rhythm
Music - Richard Cook on lifting the city to musical expression
Television
Friends together
Television - Andrew Billen gets cold feet about a new BBC drama that verges on comedy
Drink
Absolut winners
Drink - Victoria Moore goes on a quest to satisfy her springtime Vodka cravings
Books
Spirit in the sky. Fundamentalism in the 20th century has been to religion what fascism has been to patriotism. Edward Skidelsky looks at the ugly growth of an un-Godly fanaticism
The Battle for God: Fundamentalism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam
Karen Armstrong HarperCollins, 442pp, £19.99
ISBN 0002555239
The virgin queen
Joan of Arc
Mary Gordon Weidenfeld & Nicoloson, 168pp, £12.99
ISBN 0670885371
Attila the Hen
Margaret Thatcher: Vol 1, 1925-79
John Campbell Jonathan Cape, 512pp, £25
ISBN 0224040979
Novel of the week
Human Punk
John King Cape, 345pp, £10
ISBN 0224060481
Identity crisis
Who Do We Think We Are? creating the new Britain
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 320pp, £18.99
ISBN 0713994134
Sri Lankan skeletons
Anil's Ghost
Michael Ondaatje Bloomsbury, 256pp, £16.99
ISBN 074754865
Clinton's complaint
The Human Stain
Philip Roth Jonathan Cape, 368pp, £16.99
ISBN 0224060902
Murphy's Law
Trimble
Henry McDonald Bloomsbury, 342pp, £16.99
ISBN 0747544522
Back in print
Beyond a Boundary
C L R James Serpents Tail, 267pp, £7.99
ISBN 1852427329
Observations
Letters to the Editor
New Statesman readers give their views - see what they said and find out how to contribute yourself by going to our letters pages
