19 July 2004

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

Jason Cowley, Editor, New Statesman

Cover story

Blair is weighed in the balance and found wanting

Lord Butler, behind the soft language, has coruscating criticisms. If the PM gets away with it, it will be because of failures in the British system of accountability. By John Kampfner, political editor

By John Kampfner

Features

No lies, but catastrophic misjudgements

By Nick Cohen

The Butler report 2 - Those who think the Prime Minister deceived us in order to take us to war have missed the point. His far more serious crime was blundering incompetence

"The questioning was polite, but probing"

By John Kampfner

The biggest con-trick

By Phillip Knightley

The Butler report 3 - We've all been dazzled by the glamour of James Bond and other fictional heroes. Spies, whichever country they work for, have always been useless

Goodbye to the control freaks?

By Donald Hirsch

The spending review suggests the Chancellor is willing to put more trust in public servants

Turbulence in the trout stream

By Peter Dunn

The Mail newspapers are offering their readers a dream cottage in an idyllic Dorset village. But is the property as desirable as advertised?

It's our party. . .

By Mark Seddon

Mark Seddon on plans to resume the battle to make Labour more democratic

They all want the luck of the Irish

By Patrick West

Does your mother come from Ireland? Patrick West's does and he's fed up with everyone claiming his heritage

Beyond the double shift

By Suzanne Moore

Up to now, new Labour has been determined that we should all work, work, work, including parents of infants. Has it changed its mind?

Regulars

New Statesman Leader

He got it wrong

Mark Thomas - buys himself a priesthood

By Mark Thomas

Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya and the United States: an axis of what? An axis, as it happens, of countries that wanted to ban sex education for adolescents

Darcus Howe - hopes for no more Caribbean executions

By Darcus Howe

The Caribbean people like hanging so much that they stone its opponents

Paul Routledge hears of bad Tory table manners

By Paul Routledge

Ministers keep jobs for now, appalling Tory table manners, and Corbyn's woolly jumper

Competition

Win vouchers to spend at any Tesco store

Culture

From jailhouse to suburban rock

By Sarfraz Manzoor

Music once had the ability to appal and shock. Now the most radical symbol worn by fans on the streets is the iPod. As rock'n'roll reaches its 50th birthday, it has become unbearably middle-of-the-road

Michael Moore gives much more

By Gavin Smith

Cinema - The American film critic Gavin Smith interviews the man who hopes to change the US with his caustic look at the Bush administration, Fahrenheit 9/11

Decade of disturbance

By Richard Cork

Art - Richard Cork finds that the new Sixties show at Tate Britain is about much more than Twiggy

Sound suggestion

By Robert Hardy

Installation - Robert Hardy, bass guitarist of Franz Ferdinand, is astonished and delighted by a daring venture at the V&A

Peter Conrad - A foreign affair

By Peter Conrad

Opera - Impassioned, intelligent and close to perfection. By Peter Conrad Capriccio Palais Garnier, Paris

Film

Miranda Sawyer - Reality bites

By Miranda Sawyer

Film - A raw and intimate look at life in the dust of postwar Kabul. By Miranda Sawyer Joy of Madness (PG)

Television

Andrew Billen - Cheap laughs

By Andrew Billen

Television - Why the most watched evening of the week is now the least. By Andrew Billen Who Killed Saturday Night TV? (Channel 4)

Books

With justice on their side? As politicians contend that 10,000 civilian casualties in Iraq are "acceptable", finding a moral justification for war has never been more challenging. Tim Garden asks when it is right to fight

By Tim Garden

Arguing About War Michael Walzer Yale University Press, 208pp, £16.99 ISBN 0300103654 War Is a Racket General Smedley D Butler Feral House, 80pp, £6.99