02 May 2005
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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
Could the future be yellow?
2005 election - It is not only the former Labour MP Brian Sedgemore who is defecting to the Lib Dems. So are vast numbers of NS readers. The Lib Dems have a clear lead in our poll of 1,000 readers and, with the Greens, have more than half the votes. Yet most voted Labour in the last election. Introduction
Features
The reckoning
Election 2005: the bogeyman - MPs are ready to oust the PM if he tries to brazen it out after a big victory. If they don't, they fear, he will do to their party what Thatcher did to hers, and send it into terminal decline. John Kampfner reports
Apathetic and proud
2005 Election: the crunch - Abstaining can be a very fine thing, writes Zoe Williams, but actually I've decided I'm going to vote after all
The secret life of Labour voters
The polls tell us they are out there in their millions - so why is it so hard to find anyone who will say loud and proud that they are voting Labour? Hester Lacey goes on a hunt in Dorset
I keep quiet about it in Muswell Hill
The polls tell us they are out there in their millions - so why is it so hard to find anyone who will say loud and proud that they are voting Labour? Brian Cathcart corners one in Muswell Hill
'Voters seem to prefer their leaders a tad dishonest'
Election: Issue of the week - It's no use the opposition parties raising trust as an issue. People think that all politicians are fibbers anyway
Up and up with red balloons
Election - John Kampfner meets Brown's man Ed Balls, and finds him respectful of Blair but wary of babies
How our writers will vote
Never have NS contributors been in such agony. Labour, the Lib Dems and the Undecideds jostle for the lead
Dear Doctor Ballot . . .
Suffering from election stress and strain? Don't worry, the New Statesman campaign doctor is here to help
Regulars
Mark Thomas - assesses the threat of banner-waving
It is now an offence to "spoil the visual aspect" of Parliament Square. Which is legal speak for telling people to clear off and take away their banners about the war
Competition
Win vouchers to spend in any Tesco store
Culture
The beauty myth
Why do we idealise the human figure? We are biologically driven to exaggerate bodily areas that we value, argues the classical art specialist Nigel Spivey
The echoing streets
Contemporary art - The enormous loss caused by the Holocaust is captured in a deeply moving work by Susan Hiller, as Richard Cork describes
Brass in pocket
Encounters - The Buena Vista Social Club was just the start for Cuba's musical capitalist Juan de Marcos Gonzalez, finds Alice OKeeffe
Film
Mark Kermode - Virgin voyage
Film - Prepare to be moved by the unfilmable and the unoriginal. By Mark Kermode The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (PG) Mean Creek (15)
Television
Andrew Billen - Good ol' girls
Television - The men aren't so easy to stand by in a revealing documentary, writes Andrew Billen Queens of Country (BBC1)
The Fan
The fan - Hunter Davies finds the bouquet wasn't from Becks
He may have mumbled, but Gazza thanked me. Rare glory for a ghost!
Books
A direct line to the Almighty. Contempt for due process runs through the Blair governments like a livid wound. This, says new Labour, is of concern to Hampstead liberals, not to "our people". But democracy is threatened and only a British orange revolution will do
British Government in Crisis Christopher Foster Hart Publishing, 334pp, £19.95 ISBN 1841135496
The sound of silence
Dear Austen Nina Bawden Virago, 130pp, £10 ISBN 1844081842
Publish and be damned
The Laughter of Triumph: William Hone and the fight for the free press Ben Wilson Faber & Faber, 455pp, £16.99 ISBN 0571224709
No regrets
With Billie Julia Blackburn Jonathan Cape, 354pp, £17.99 ISBN 0224075896
Fiction - Man on the run
Divided Kingdom Rupert Thomson Bloomsbury, 416pp, £17.99 ISBN 0747572186
The book business
Nicholas Clee on why most bookshops these days offer you the same stuff
