20 January 2003
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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
Can he be stopped?
When it comes to war on Iraq, Clare Short has been portrayed as a dissenter. But she tells John Kampfner she is actually the voice of the cabinet - and of the British people
Features
George Bush's other poodle
John Howard, Australia's PM, is the mouse that roars for America, whipping his country into war fever and paranoia about terrorism within. John Pilger reports from Sydney
Ever the willing ally
Australians were on hand even for the Boer war and the Boxer Rebellion. They were involved in more of the 20th century's major wars than either the British or the Americans
We need our bolshie members
Stephen Byers demands new ways of making the voices of Labour's rank and file heard in Whitehall
Lady Bountiful tries life in the slums
Why do we need middle-class writers like Polly Toynbee to tell us what it's like to be poor? Poor people are quite capable of speaking for themselves. By Judith Williamson
The death of PR
The public relations industry is in crisis, and wondering if it should tell something like the truth
How business will pay the university piper
Ministers will let more working-class children on to degree courses, but those students will have to learn how to oil the wheels of commerce. Francis Beckett reports
The glory of failure
From The Office to Estelle Morris, we are learning that success is not everything
Essay
NS Essay - 'American culture is animated by a heresy: that human nature is not inherently flawed but essentially good'
The real danger of President Bush's plans for Iraq is that they are based on the belief that evil can be eradicated from the world. St Augustine knew better and so, after centuries of experience, do Europeans
Regulars
Cristina Odone expects men to change more nappies
The childcaring dad will be as important a social development as the working mum
Darcus Howe faces divine punishment
As I recover in hospital, I am told that my pain is punishment from the Lord
Paul Routledge reveals a new venture for Mandy
Mandy sets the record straight (again), a case of mistaken identity, and Rupert lets it flow
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
Art of the state
Today's government has exchanged visual propaganda for verbal spin. But the political poster will survive as an evocative art form long after the passions that created it have faded
Consuming passions
Art - Miranda Sawyer on why we are all shopping for our lives
Winter of Love
Music - Ted Kessler on the troubled life of LA's first hippie and his long journey to freedom
Theatre
All-singing and dancing
Theatre - Amy Rosenthal gets a kick out of a sparkling Thirties satire on the cult of celebrity
Television
The misery of sex
Television - Andrew Billen on a grim but ungrubby dramatisation of Lawrence's Sons and Lovers
Books
A terrible analysis is born
Observations on poets
Back to the future. New Labour is not as new as it thinks. The Third Way is just the kind of guff that Ramsay MacDonald would have espoused. By David Marquand
George Lansbury: at the heart of old Labour John Shepherd Oxford University Press, 428pp, £35 ISBN 0198201648 Labour Forces: from Ernest Bevin to Gordon Brown Edited by Kevin Jefferys I B Tauris, 258pp, £25 MacDonald's Party: Labour identities and crisis (1922-1931) David Howell Oxford University Press, 452pp, £55
La sporca vita
The Dark Heart of Italy: travels through time and space across Italy Tobias Jones Faber and Faber, 266pp, £16.99 ISBN 0571205828
Spoilt for choice
In View Edited by Dick Emery UK TV, 88pp, £9.99 (for orders call: 020 7765 2907)
Faithful only to poetry
Earthly Signs: Moscow diaries (1917-1922) Marina Tsvetaeva, Edited by Jamey Gambrell Yale University Press, 248pp, £17.95 ISBN 0300069227
The pity of things
The Photograph Penelope Lively Viking, 236pp, £14.99 ISBN 0670913928
Hero for our times
The Broken Places Susan Perabo Bloomsbury, 254pp, £9.99 ISBN 074755773X
Poetic injustice
Nineteen Eighty-Three David Peace Serpent's Tail, 416pp, £12 ISBN 1852426845
