12 June 2000

From the Editor…

sue-matthias 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

Sue Matthias, Acting Editor, New Statesman

Cover story

For God's sake, grow up!

R W Johnson, an Oxford don for 26 years, explains why he left England: to get away from the national obsession with class and rank

By R W Apple

Features

Behind closed doors

By Nick Cohen

Direct election of mayors sounds a good idea. Not so, argues Nick Cohen, who detects the start of a new era of council secrecy and unaccountability

Don't mess with our history

By Joan Bakewell

Theme parks and films can't really tell us what it was like to be alive in the past

The man who started a class war

By Mary Riddell

Peter Lampl is a millionaire who favours selection and thinks public schools are superb. So what's he doing in bed with Gordon Brown? Mary Riddell met him

The left discovers Adam Smith

By John Lloyd

John Lloyd, at an international summit in Berlin, finds that the Third Way is alive and well, providing you don't call it that any more

Save the pound and lose your job

By Simon Buckby

As long as Britain stays outside the single currency, it will suffer from a volatile exchange rate, making it unattractive to investors, argues Simon Buckby

Through Asia's Berlin Wall

By Steve Percy

Steve Percytakes the Peace Bus from Lahore to Delhi over a border double-fenced with coils of cobra wire

Democracy needs defending

By Alistair Moffat

New Statesman Scotland

These glittering prizes are tarnished

By Alan Taylor

New Statesman Scotland - Cricket umpires, film stars, embittered old hacks - just about anyone can expect an honorary degree these days. Alan Taylor wonders what the universities are up to

Responsibility without power

By Tom Brown

New Statesman Scotland - MPs are carrying the can for the disillusion felt by Scottish voters over the goings-on at Holyrood, yet may not speak out on Scottish affairs. By Tom Brown