23 March 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
Interview: Alex Ferguson
Alastair Campbell talks to Alex Ferguson about football, politics and much more besides. Just one of the highlights of this special edition guest-edited by Tony Blair's former head of communications
Features
Manifesto for renewal
When Alastair Campbell agreed to be our guest editor, he invited readers of his blog, and of LabourList and Labourhome plus readers of newstatesman.com to send in ideas for inclusion in the Labour Party manifesto for the next election
Loosening Labour’s golden straitjacket
Economic crisis presents opportunities as well as stark threats for social democracy, writes the Oxford academic Vernon Bogdanor
Bring home the revolution
Mark Bennett worked as a volunteer on Barack Obama’s election campaign. His lessons for Labour? The new president used the internet brilliantly, as we know, but he also knew how to play the “ground game”
Editors’ choices on education and health care
We asked Britain’s newspaper and news magazine editors, as well as some senior broadcasters, about the choices they make in education and health care for themselves and their families. Here are their answers
Low charisma, high values
Paola Totaro, London bureau chief for the Sydney Morning Herald, is baffled as to why Gordon Brown gets such a bad press
Get me Sporty Spice
Mental illness is a defining issues of our time and will affect one in four of us. But the media are reluctant to cover the subject without the obligatory celebrity endorsement
Regulars
New Statesman Leader
Time to up the game and win
New Statesman guest editor Alastair Campbell is also this week's leader writer. Here he argues Labour's got it all to play for when it comes to the next election
The Politics Column
The hollow-gram
David Cameron is no moderniser, but wedded to old-style Tory policies. So why isn’t there more questioning of him?
Culture
‘‘What we can rely on is our creativity, our inspiration and our passion’’
In these turbulent times, arts and culture are crucial, not only to our well-being, but to economic recovery. We neglect them at our peril, argues the actor and Old Vic director
Too much of a feel-good thing
Under Labour, British cinema has enjoyed a commercial renaissance. If only more film-makers were willing to take risks
Six of the best: Brits to watch
Half-dozen of the hottest emerging Brit-screen talents
Performance
The paradise that wasn’t
Mark Ravenhill is an awe-inspiring dramatist, despite his dubious politics Over There Royal Court Theatre, London SW1
Film
Chinks in his Armani
The life of Italy’s malevolent former leader is rendered in unforgiving style Il Divo (15) dir: Paolo Sorrentino
Television
Turn on, tune in, drop off
Round-the-clock reporting has not made Britain any better-informed BBC News 24 Sky News
Radio
Here’s one show that will have you hooked
Early-morning chat about fishing is like something out of a Ted Hughes poem
The fan
Penalties, sin bins and how to kick Rugby and football can learn a lot from each other
Books
The void of understanding
“The theme is leadership, but the subtext is betrayal.” Philip Gould on a great pollster’s remarkably candid memoir of working with Clinton, Blair and Mandela
Prétentieux? Moi?
Tony Cartano, de la maison d’édition Albin Michel, est sûr que le roman de notre rédacteur invité sera un grand succès
