24 May 2004
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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
What Brown would do in No 10
We know about his economic policies. But where does the Chancellor stand on wars, Israel, schools, and law and order? John Kampfner reveals the hidden agenda of the next PM
Features
Facts that should change the world
Every three weeks, the Americans throw away 1,260 million plastic bottles. It's enough to reach the moon, and Brits are nearly as bad
The pro-war camp is struck dumb
Washington is at fever pitch over the torture revelations. Yet beyond the Beltway, many Americans may turn out to be more outraged by the outrage
Can judges restore America's honour?
In the next few weeks, the US Supreme Court will decide if the Guantanamo Bay prisoners should be brought within the ambit of the law. Nick Cohen reports
The real roots of Middle England
Scared of modernity, obsessed with tidy houses, they call the lower orders orcs (or is it oiks?). What do the Hobbits remind you of?
A conspiracy of the rich
There's lots of ruin in a country, it is said. But only the IMF could turn one of Africa's wealthiest nations into one of its poorest in just 20 years
Close encounter with Shin Bet
Robert Tait was merely a reporter trying to leave the Gaza Strip. Then he fell foul of Israel's security service
Towards a better Britain?
Broadband, people say, will improve the way we work, rest and play. Robert Colvile reports on the first in a series of debates looking at what progress is being made
Essay
NS Essay - The belief that more education will create more equal opportunities has been proved wrong
Genuine meritocracy and greater social mobility are emerging as Labour's big ideas for the third term. But perfect equality of life chances, argues Richard Reeves, is impossible unless the state intends to stop parents reading bedtime stories to their children
Regulars
New Statesman Leader
Gordon works. Don't let Tony wreck it
How Blair's government came to look febrile and incompetent
Mark Thomas discovers Coca-Cola's Nazi links
I am shocked when, at a conference on corporate responsibility, the man from McDonald's standing next to me starts criticising Coca-Cola on ethical grounds
Darcus Howe fears the BNP is getting off lightly
The British National Party is surely rather more than a "vexatious group"
Competition
Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store
Culture
View from outside
Clapboard houses, solitary diners and gloomy offices - Edward Hopper's paintings have come to represent the loneliness of 20th-century American life. But what is it that makes his work truly great, asks the novelist Maggie Gee
No shock and awe
Opera - Michael Portillo wonders if it is time for the Met's James Levine to pass the baton
The magic of colour
Art - Richard Cork revels in the hectic pleasures of Joan Miro at the Pompidou Centre
Theatre
Michael Portillo - The man who would be king
Theatre - Pirandello and Stoppard make fools of the sane in an eloquent homage to the Bard. By Michael Portillo Henry IV Donmar Warehouse, London WC2
Film
Mark Kermode - No angel
Film - A baffling but magical new concoction from the enfant terrible of Spanish cinema. By Mark Kermode Bad Education (15)
Television
Andrew Billen - Slave to the people
Television - Oliver Stone allows himself to be seduced by the Cuban dictator's smooth answers, writes Andrew Billen Comandante (BBC4)
Books
The straight guy. A bisexual ex-communist who became entangled with the CIA, Stephen Spender is remembered today more for his colourful life than his poetry. And yet his overriding characteristics, both as a man and a poet, were charming simplicity and directness
Stephen Spender John Sutherland Viking, 627pp, £25 ISBN 0670883034
Say you want a revolution
1968: the year that rocked the world Mark Kurlansky Jonathan Cape, 441pp, £17.99 ISBN 0224062514
Elegy for the US
More Equal Than Others: America from Nixon to the new century Godfrey Hodgson Princeton University Press, 379pp, £19.95 ISBN 0691117888
Work to rule
United We Stand: a history of Britain's trade unions Alastair J Reid Allen Lane, the Penguin Press, 496pp, £25 ISBN 0713997583
Skeletons in the closet
Home: the story of everyone who ever lived in our house Julie Myerson Flamingo, 451pp, £20 ISBN 0007148224
Last words
Poetry - Sex, death and armpits. Adam Newey on collections from Catullus to Dorothy Molloy and R S Thomas
Fiction - Double vision
Dining on Stones (or, the Middle Ground) Iain Sinclair Hamish Hamilton, 451pp, £16.99 ISBN 0241142369
