04 June 2001
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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
A dying body attracts vultures
Ziauddin Sardar in riot-torn Oldham finds no scent of curry, no sound of Bollywood, no evidence of electioneering: "an Asian area quite unlike any I have ever seen"
Features
Blair has stolen everyone's clothes
Election 2001 - Dull? We are seeing a sensational realignment. The PM drove the Tories to the extreme right; now he is pushing the Lib Dems way to the left
A floating voter meets her destiny
Election 2001 - Jack Straw called off a walkabout, the Tories wouldn't talk, and the Socialist Alliance failed to deliver a promised stunt. Jenny Diskifaced an awful realisation
How the suburbs turned red
Election 2001 - On 7 June, for the first time, most Labour voters are likely to be middle class. Ivor Creweexplains how the electoral world was turned upside down
The scorn of the literati
Election 2001 - A L Kennedy, James Fenton, David Hare: these and other writers fill the media with their elite disdain for politicians. John Lloyd denounces them
Turn Whitehall upside down
Election 2001 - Within days of the election result, Tony Blair could have made the most crucial decisions of the second term, writes Tristram Hunt
How our writers will vote
Election 2001 - The New Statesman asked its contributors to reveal their intentions. Here are 69 replies, including 30 for Labour, 13 for the Lib Dems and seven for the Tories
Labour and Tories lag in youth affections
Generation Next
A tale of theft, bugs and bottoms
Election 2001 - John Boothdecided to take on Peter Mandelson, but was unprepared for a quite bizarre sequence of events
Wellies, brooches and wispy hair
Election 2001 - Annalisa Barbieri, our election fashion correspondent, finds female politicians in a state of sartorial shock
Blame it on Amis, Barnes and McEwan
British novels no longer bring us "news" of our times
Culture
A little star
It's the first new Asterix in five years, and millions of copies are available in bookshops worldwide. Helen Laville wonders why the Americans are still being defeated by the small village of Gauls
Barely alive
Music - Richard Cook gets the heeBee-Geebees over the comeback of the Seventies siblings
Model behaviour
Art - Tom Rosenthal looks at the relationship between muse and master
Fu fighters
Martial arts - Stephen Smith gets a kick out of a kung fu video retrospective
Television
Sobering stuff
Television - Andrew Billen looks at our fascination with real-life breakdowns
Books
Lines, damn lines, and statistics. Will Self reads a life of Pablo Escobar, the most notorious dope dealer of modern times, and recalls his own adventures in the land of addiction
Killing Pablo: the hunt for the richest, most powerful criminal in history Mark Bowden Atlantic Books, 387pp, £16.99 ISBN 1903809002
Too many parties
Back When We Were Grownups Anne Tyler Chatto & Windus, 274pp, £15.99 ISBN 070117286X
The whole secret
Louis: the life of Robert Louis Stevenson Philip Callow Constable Robinson, 336pp, £20 ISBN 0094801800
Novel of the week
Broken Bodies Sally Emerson Little, Brown, 293pp, £15.99 ISBN 0316854832
Counting the cliches
Sputnik Sweetheart Haruki Murakami Harvill Press, 229pp, £12 ISBN 186046825X
Paperback reader
Diary of a Man in Despair Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen Duckback, 249pp, £6.99 ISBN 0715631004
United in loathing
The Progressive Century: the future of the centre-left in Britain Edited by Neal Lawson and Neil Sherlock Palgrave, 256pp, £14.99 ISBN 0333949625
Commentary - Sex, power and corruption
Sebastian Shakespeare selects the best satire on journalism ever written
