07 September 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
An ideological map
How can we build a “good society”? Four evolving strands of progressive thought and the guiding spirits behind them assessed
Features
Age of Homo religiosus
Our annual God issue is always a bestseller, yet there are many NS readers who think we should have nothing to do with religion. Why?
Afghangsters’ paradise
When I think of the Taliban, I think of Tony Soprano and his gang. They are more mafiosi than mujahedin
The new progressives
There is a common belief across the four new ideological trends that the state must be restructured and civil society empowered
Labour's Crisis
Labour is in the middle of its gravest crisis in 30 years. It needs to rediscover the radicalism that animated its founders
The socialist’s guide to camping
Just because humans are selfish, should we give up on the ideals of equality and community? Oxford philosopher G A Cohen, in the book he was writing when he died last month, argues that there is reason for hope
Essay
Victims of our own excess
Since the mid-1990s, feminist opposition to fashion has all but evaporated. But are all these must-have It bags, new-season dresses and vertiginous heels really making women happy?
Regulars
New Statesman Leader
Leader: In Afghanistan, political success remains as elusive as military triumph
The leaders of the coalition are now ignoring allegations of fraud and corruption that they have not tolerated elsewhere
First Thoughts
Sell off the Roads!
. . . on James Murdoch’s bananas, political dynasties and a game of cards
The Politics Column
The drowned world
Time is running out in Bangladesh where floods caused by climate change threaten to engulf entire islands
World Citizen
Megrahi was framed
The trial of the “Lockerbie bomber” was worse than a travesty of justice. Evidence that never came to court proves his innocence
Down & Out in London
Down and Out in London
Don’t say I don’t look after you – says the woman who threw me out of my house
Culture
Back to mine
From Yorkshire to Somerset, the coal industry once employed a million men and was the lifeblood of hundreds of communities. A new season of films preserve the memory of a lost era
In for the kill
As five women set their sights on the Mercury Prize, Jude Rogers, one of the judges, celebrates their success
Film
Big River Man (15) and Bustin’ Down the Door (15)
Two waterborne documentaries leave several questions floating
Oh, to be left alone in one’s own bed . . .
Elderly widows discover the joys of not always having to look good
Television
Wuthering Heights
Some novels lend themselves to the small screen. This isn’t one of them
Books
Keynes: the return of the Master
J M Keynes understood better than most that the self-regulating market economy is a dangerous fiction. Has the crash of 2008 vindicated him?
