09 February 2009
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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
All of us live by the logic of finance
Margaret Thatcher promised wealth for all in her new society. First, though, we all had to become capitalists. Peter Wilby on our long road to ruin
Features
It's not all over, yet
The Conservatives are ahead in the polls yet their isolationist policies could still be their undoing, but only if Labour make a fight of it
A country with no memory
As an anthropologist working in Russia in the 1990s, I believed a culture of memorials would emerge to mark the Soviet past. How wrong I was
How to say the wrong thing
Hope for civilisation, dress advice to Mr Brown and why an ashtray came between me and Scotland's Deputy First Minister
Wake up, Sarko
As two million demonstrators proved last month, the French are furious, and not only about losing their jobs
The politics of bollocks
Supporters of the new US president refuse to admit that the "man of change" is, in fact, changing very little. It's time the Obama lovers grew up
''Soldiers don't trust a thing they're told''
The use of an inadequately armoured patrol vehicle has caused the deaths of 38 British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their families are accusing the army of brutal negligence
China's final frontier
The Chinese are latecomers to space, and desperate to catch up. Two years after shooting down a satellite, they stand accused of stealing US secrets. A new arms race has begun.
She's a celebrity, get me out of here
Beware: this hour and a half of luvvie talk is only for the bravest of listeners
Shakespeare's Globe
Jack Straw’s promise to reform the House of Lords is long overdue. Remember Lord Kagan?
Interview
Interview: Charles Clarke
One of Labour's most intellectually confident heavyweights would like to return to government. Charles Clarke on Blair, Europe and what Gordon Brown must do next.
Regulars
New Statesman Leader
A retreat into economic nationalism would be a disaster for Britain
British jobs for British workers: no politician should ever promise something that he knows is illegal under EU law
Commons Confidential
Village Life
Who's been caught by No 10’s candid camera? All the gossip from the Westminster Village
The look of love
Gordon Brown is a big Burt Bacharach fan, wrote Kevin Maguire in the New Statesman last October. We asked for any Bacharach song (he's had 52 hits in the top 40 in the UK, after all), rewritten in honour of his number-one fan
Culture
The promised land
Art theory assumes that our aesthetic tastes are conditioned by the culture in which we live. But does genetic programming have more to do with it than we think?
The romance of the ordinary
Prunella Clough's thoroughly unflashy work recalls a quieter, more modest era in British art
Theatre
Flawed character
The downfall of a parish priest is well staged, but where does the tragedy lie? Be Near Me Donmar Warehouse, London WC2
Film
Age before beauty
A hyper-schmaltzy insight into our obsession with youthful looks The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (12A) dir: David Fincher
Television
Grotesque, glorious nonsense
This whodunnit may not win points for originality, but it's exciting stuff Whitechapel ITV1
Books
Can we ever learn to love our bodies?
Thirty years ago Fat Is a Feminist Issue railed against dieting and the media's tormenting stream of idealised body shapes. It did a fine job of raising consciousness, yet today the situation is even worse. In a new study, Susie Orbach tries to understand why.
The book that changed my life
John Gray chooses The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn
Observations
Uncle Joe’s standing
In his home town, Stalin is still number one. Gori's absurdly hagiographic Stalin Museum refuses to acknowledge the existence of either Trotsky or the purges
