Don't miss Jason Cowley's in depth interview with Foreign Secretary David Miliband. Caricatured as über-Blairite and reviled by some of those close to the Prime Minister for the leadership challenge that never was, is he destined for the top job?

Michael Harvey meanwhile ponders the changes in British foreign policy post-Blair.

We've got Zoe Williams on how Michelle Obama flummoxed the press.

Jonathan Derbyshire profiles Philip Blond whose 'Red Tory' thesis is seen as a grave threat to Labour.

And economist Irwin Stelzer predicts how the new capitalism will operate post-squeeze.

Fatima Bhutto berates the rulers of Pakistan who want so much to keep America happy while John Pilger reveals how Hollywood censors by omission.

Plus Ian Irvine talks high culture with John Adams, and Daniel Trilling reviews Iain Sinclair's new book - Hackney: That Rose-Red Empire

www.newstatesman.com - Miliband and more

We launch our brand new columnist Martin Jacques - the former editor of that legendary publication Marxism Today. Don't miss his fascinating essay on the financial collapse - and you can learn more about him online through our Q&A.

Elsewhere in the magazine, you can read James Macintyre on Ed Balls - the schools secretary needs to become more of a team player.

John Cornwell profiles Pope Benedict XVI and Sholto Byrnes ponders the role of smart power.

Look out too for Annalisa Barbieri on being nine months pregnant. And Sorrel Neuss writes us a letter from Kyrgzstan.

In Arts&Culture Ryan Gilbey offers a modest proposal for reinventing the Oscars. And in Books there's Hermione Eyre on Lucky Kunst: the rise and fall of young British art by Gregor Muir.

On newstatesman.com, our economics coverage continues with John McFall whose Treasury select committee last week heard apologies from some of Britain's leading bankers. The MP gives his take on bankers' bonuses.

Talking of which, we'll be hearing the inside track on the dark world of capitalist remuneration from a City worker. Put it this way, reward has got more to do with politics than commercial success.

Oh and check out Vincent Bevins on Sunday's victory for Hugo Chávez in a referendum result that removed a cap on how many terms he can serve as president of Venezuela.

www.newstatesman.com - This week at the NS

Oliver Postgate, who died on Monday 8 December, should be remembered as one of the great children's storytellers of the 20th century.

Generations were transported by his imagination - and thanks to creations like Bagpuss and Ivor the Engine - were inspired to use their own.

He wrote for newstatesman.com between November 2006 and February of this year. In the closing months of his life his primary preoccupation seemed to be with man's wilful destruction of the planet.

His musings on the subject were suitably whimsical. This year in his God Dialogues he wrote on the inherent worthlessness of money, the deeply damaging effects of religion ("The separation between law and religious injunction has got to be absolute and stay that way, otherwise fear will come back into the land") and nuclear weapons.

Oliver died in Kent aged 83. I last heard from him on 1 July. I'd asked him to write for us again.

He wrote: "Dear Ben, Been(am) very ill. The world will have to manage without me for a bit.
all the best Oliver".

You can read all Oliver's contributions to newstatesman.com by clicking here

www.newstatesman.com - Thank you Oliver Postgate

It's often said that we journalists are a despicable breed. After all we murdered poor Diana. We lie at the drop of a hat and we'd sell our grandmothers to the highest bidder.

Of course it occurs to no-one that you don't go into this racket if money floats your boat. No. It's a better story if the public think we hacks are all sweaty, greedy and evil.

And it's true I've not always behaved ethically.

For example, when I was at the BBC I disgracefully tried to balance coverage of the illegal and immoral Iraq war by interviewing people who were opposed to it. I suppose that makes me a communist.

I only hope that's offset by the obsequious treatment Lexus David Cameron gets from political editor Nick Robinson.

The other occasion I erred I'm afraid I trod all over Timmy Mallett's moral compass.

A highpoint in the loveable entertainer's career was his afternoon show at BBC Three Counties Radio where he was lucky enough to be produced by my wife.

On one occasion we went out for a drink in Luton after they'd come off air and he told a very moderately amusing anecdote about fellow children's presenter Michaela Strachan. His very good friend.

It was about Strachan's reaction to a staged kidnap attempt while she was doing a hostile environment training course ahead of filming in some remote troublespot.

Apparently she screamed or fainted or got the giggles. Can't remember which.

Mysteriously this tale appeared in a Daily Telegraph diary column quoting what the Mallett had said.

And my god the wrath. No sooner had I got home that evening than the phone started ringing.

"Timmy's very angry," came a voice down the line when I answered. "Timmy's very angry."

"Oh really Timmy? Why's that," I replied, weakly leaning against the wall.

"Guess what happened to me today," went on the pint-sized funster. "I went to see my parents - my old pensioner parents - and they showed me a copy of the Daily Telegraph. What the hell's wrong with you, selling a story you'd heard sitting in a pub...

"That's a disgusting profession you're joining. Really despicable. Now I'm going to have to ring up my friend Michaela and apologise. Timmy's very, very angry."

And I have to say I did feel a bit bad about upsetting him. I'm not sure the diary story did Strachan any harm - actually it gave them both some of the publicity they so clearly crave.

But I do worry that I provided a bit of the oxygen that kept his national profile high enough to see him pop up in the outback on this year's 'I'm a celebrity'.

The gnomic pot of insufferable jollity is once again on network TV and for that I apologise to you all.

www.newstatesman.com - Crossing Timmy Mallett

It's tempting, as the editor of a website, to commission subjects that will get as many comments as possible. The theory goes that a lively comments section drives hits and given websites like ours are businesses that's quite a consideration.

But there's a serious downside to this. The web's provided all manner of characters with a brand new opportunity to access a mass audience and quite frankly an awful lot of commenters don't deserve that.

Previously the chance to feed back into public debates were limited to democratic expressions like voting, petitioning, demonstrating or writing stiff letters to the editor or your MP.

Of course there were exceptions of a few talk radio stations, which I generally like, and the reliably awful Any Answers - the BBC programme which follows Saturday's edition of the often excellent Any Questions which fields a panel of public figures.

From where I sit you get to see all the comments made on newstatesman.com and you have the responsibility to ensure what the boundaries are. I've blogged about this before.

Inevitably - however much one tries not to - there's a chance of getting dragged into debates because, I suppose, my own views inform some of the decisions I make.

One of the things that annoys me most though is the failure to see - or to admit to seeing - the weakness in one's own argument. You can always tell when a leader is past his or her sell by date because they start to believe their own bull - Tony Blair was a classic example of this. One could almost see him convincing himself as he fired off an explanation for some decision.

Equally we have commenters who relentlessly push the same world view at any opportunity. Believe me it's begun to get a little tedious in some cases especially if they constantly accuse you of being part of an SIS plot or, in another case, unwittily insult fellow contributors - over and over and over again.

But all of this is part of the territory and comments can also be extremely intelligent, interesting and funny too.

What isn't funny, intelligent or interesting is the vileness that appears in our comments section when we run anything to do with subjects like Israel/Palestine, the Armenian genocide, the Holocaust, the division of Cyprus - I could go on.

So having published an article to mark the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht and wasted far too much of our time on trying to moderate the comments I've switched off your right of reply. I'm not interested in providing an outlet for revisionist views of what happened in the Holocaust - especially when they blame Jewish people for the climate from which National Socialism sprang.

Equally I'm not interested in being a platform for extremist Zionists who scarcely conceal their racism towards their Arab neighbours and who belittle other victims of Hitler's vile regime.

The question is, can we now allow debates about these touchpaper issues? I'd like to but some of you are, frankly, changing my mind.

And if this turns me into the role of censor so be it. That is a responsibility that comes with the job.

Now moving on. Sarah Palin plans to allow god to guide her on her decision to run in 2012. Let's hope it's a different god to the bigoted, warmongering, morally deficient one that apparently guided Dubbya.

www.newstatesman.com - No room for bigots

With his successor doing his bit for Anglo-Chinese relations with his flag-waving "ping pong's coming home" performance in Beijing last weekend, it's nice to see Ken Livingstone back in work this week as a consultant to his old friend Hugo Chavez. London, it seems, is just not big enough for these larger than life political characters.

Apparently Livingstone's brief is to get Caracas moving. Having visited the Venezuelan capital a couple of times myself, I can say that as a regular Tube traveller Ken should at least find the underground system to his satisfaction. Speedy and reliable, cheap and clean, the Caracas metro is among the best in the world; its air conditioned platforms just about the only place in the city you can find any peace and quiet. It was built by the French, of course.

Above ground though, it's a different story. Traffic gridlock, brash unsightly skyscrapers and a headache-inducing haze are the inevitable consequences of a society in which oil is cheaper than water and the automobile has ruled unchecked for decades. Much of the centre of the city was hollowed out to make way for US-style freeways and flyovers – now crumbling – during the last oil boom of the 1970s. Trying to ban Chelsea tractors was one thing; attempting to introduce a congestion zone in Caracas would be like trying to persuade lions of the merits of vegetarianism.

Despite its numerous other achievements, Chavista socialism meanwhile has so far made little progress towards getting the majority of residences out of the barrios that suffocate the city on all sides and into proper housing (though Ken, in one of his redder moments, will surely have privately enjoyed the decision a couple of years ago by the mayor of Caracas to appropriate a couple of private golf clubs to create additional living space). Caracas residents continue to endure levels of violent crime that make South London's knife crisis look like an episode of Trumpton.

All of which means that Ken has his work cut out - but it's nice to know that someone stands to benefit from all those years of experience at the GLC and in City Hall. It's a wonder he still has time for his own radio show. Let's hope he hasn't been taking broadcasting tips from Chavez, whose own radio and TV broadcasts have been known to run into hours and days...

An unusually tanned and relaxed Ben returns from his summer holidays - if those are the right words to describe Scotland in August - next week.

www.newstatesman.com - London's loss, Caracas' gain

You know how the Americans used to pay money to look at the deformed in circus freak shows? If that appeals to you, try the modern day version.

The utterly loathsome programme Trinny and Susannah undress the nation is another spin on the Gok Wan show how to look good naked. (Notice I'm not linking to either of them).

I'm not sure which came first but basically both have the same purpose - to get women of above average size, already insecure about their bodies, to take off their clothes so we can all sit at home and wonder at their flabby bits.

The Trinny and Susannah programme this week masqueraded as a campaign for better clothing choices for overweight women.

And it's a work of utter manipulation. Put someone in front of a camera for long enough and they'll very quickly forget it's there. Then you flatter, cajole and emotionally blackmail until the victims do just as you bid.

You can see how these people, forgetful of the national exposure they are about to have, will get their kit off in a sort of 'nudge, nudge - I will if you will' kind of a way.

Of course the presenters remain as they are - in the case of Trinny and Susannah: overprivileged, heavily coiffed, fully dressed and diving in only to hilariously grope someone's breasts or coax some tears.

This week they persuaded a group of unfortunate women who couldn't find fashions they liked, because of their shapes, to join them in taking on the high street retailers!

With a mixture of flattery and coersion, they played big on the curious way people are impressed and overawed by others simply because they appear on TV.

And in a grand finale, they had them conveyed on floats through Boston in Lincolnshire - apparently a national fat-spot.

Mind you before we got there they all had to stand around in their underwear for a good while - just so we could fully understand what they were up against.

And thanks to Trinny and Susannah we've learnt not to tease the obese but be lovely to them and put them nearly naked on national TV. How far we've come.

www.newstatesman.com - Trinny and Susannah fats your lot

This week on newstatesman.com the Ukrainian novelist Andrey Kurkov writes exclusively on Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, who related the terrible truth about Soviet totalitarianism in his Gulag Archipelago.

Kurkov observes: "Alexander Isaevich outlived his era and never truly accepted the new ‘post-soviet’ epoch.

"Having sincerely dedicated his life to a desperate struggle against communism, in 1991 Solzhenitsyn suddenly found himself without a battle to fight."

We hear from the great AL Kennedy who has been collecting the Austrian State Prize for European Literature...

"The Austrian Minister for Culture is charming and actually cares about culture and the Austrian prime minister gave me cake – while I tried to assure him my own prime minister would have taken my cake and told me it would be given to the destitute and cake-needy before sneaking it into the cake trough of a cake-spattered man in a mink cake-eating suit. Poor Gordon, though - perhaps soon to be replaced by one or another Miliband. They’re twins, after all. What happens if we get the evil twin? I’ve watched more than enough Hammer horror films to know this is surely a risk."

Only time will tell.

By the way you can see AL Kennedy in person at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Oh and don't miss Hugh O'Shaughnessy having fun with the Colombian statisticians who have elevated their country's president to similar popularity ratings as former Albanian dictator Enva Hoxha.

And check out our series on what Labour needs to do to put itself back on the path to popularity. We've already had contributions from Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, plus ex-ministers Denis MacShane and Barbara Roche.

Coming up Nick Raynsford, Iain Gibson and more.

Moving on to a Tory split...

It's being widely reported that the beautiful relationship between Lexus Dave Cameron and George 'Oik' Osborne has sailed into stormy waters over the thorny issue of marriage.

The Tory leader favours tax breaks for married couples, the shadow chancellor does not. The Times - and others - report a substantial disagreement.

Let's just examine this for a minute. Dave Cameron voiced his support for tax breaks for the legally bound (through marriage and civil partnerships) in a nod to tradition in his first speech as Tory leader. He's keen on research that indicates half of those who simply shack up split up before their child's fifth birthday. That's compared to one in 12 married people.

George Osborne reportedly takes the line it's not the state's job to tell people how to live their lives and that all parents should be supported regardless of family structure.

Of course the state (unless the Tories are planning some really sinister changes) wouldn't be telling people how to live their lives but merely encouraging them in a particular direction. But wouldn't it have to be a pretty fantastic tax break to get otherwise unwilling people to tie the knot?

Call me cynical but I smell a bit of a Tory PR cook-up here. Lexus Dave - much photographed family man and hero of traditional values. Oik Osborne - all that is fresh and libertarian about the Conservatives (really, all) but ultimately not in charge. And a policy proposal which is ultimately more gimmick than anything else. They publicise a stand-off. Oik in the end caves in. The leader and tradition prevail.

Is Dave Cameron is hugging the family values husky?

www.newstatesman.com - Tories sail into stormy waters

It's all looking rather bleak for Gordon Brown. In fact, if you agree with veteran Conservative politician John Gummer, the situation's actually worse for the prime minister than it was for John Major as his government faltered to extinction.

Writing this week on newstatesman.com, Gummer says: "I fought my first election more than forty years ago and I can’t remember anything comparable. Even as a cabinet minister living through the dying days of John Major’s Government - attacked on every side and beset by swivel-eyed revanchists – it wasn’t like this."

The ex-environment secretary expresses sympathy for Brown adding that he finds the sharpness of the attacks "disconcertingly unfair". You can read Gummer's article here.

Meanwhile David Miliband writes in the Guardian about the odds being against a Labour victory when Britain next votes and talks about turning it around for the party by offering real change. He doesn't mention Gordon Brown at all. And nor did he later rule out a leadership challenge. Although he did insist he wasn't running a campaign.

Either way ex-minister Denis Macshane thinks Miliband was spot on.

Writing on newstatesman.com he berates critics of the foreign secretary: "Instead of welcoming his rallying call to attack the Tories and to support the Government and prime minister the briefers are back running Labour into the ground. I hope Miliband continues to make his case and the maggots briefing against him are squashed."

Meanwhile Home Secretary Jacqui Smith is in bullish form arguing her party has everything to play for after the summer recess.

Like Miliband, Smith is keen to remind us of what she sees as Labour's achievements. But does anyone want to listen?

In the past few months I've been to a couple of meetings organised by the Fabians with Labour MPs and others to talk about presenting a vision for the future. At the last gathering - just as parliament was breaking up for summer recess - I suggested people needed to be reminded of the number of new schools and hospital buildings built since 1997. I also suggested they get local people (activists or otherwise) to tell the story of how these services have improved lives.

Under the Tories the health service creaked. They were like landlords running down a listed building until everyone agreed it had to be demolished. They had the same policy with the railways - privatisation of BR along with the citizens' charter being the memorable legacies of that political era.

Fortunately Labour was elected in time to save the NHS and many of the facilities are scarcely recognisable compared to when Major was chucked out of Downing Street. I haven't even mentioned portacabin classrooms.

There have been achievements - they need to be trumpeted. But, yes, there also has to be a vision for the future - maybe universal free school meals or a bonfire of the quangos as part of a wider vision for a more transparent, accountable government.

Whatever Labour can claim, it certainly isn't that it ruled for all the people. Whole parts of the UK remain stuck in a kind of economic purdah unseen, for the most part, by the rest of us.

The authoritarian controlling tendencies of New Labour have helped no-one except David Cameron who, astonishingly, is managing to sell himself as reasonable and quasi-progressive.

Opponents of the New Labour project from within the party meanwhile are quick to return to old battle grounds.

Alan Simpson is a good example in his article for newstatesman.com in which he writes:

"For months now, a group of ex-ministers have been cruising the corridors and cafeteria of Parliament in search of stray Labour MPs to descend on. “Carruthers, dear boy/girl, we haven’t spoken for ages, but have you got a moment? What are we going to do about Gordon? He is leading the party into disaster. I know you don’t want to lose your seat at the election, but what do we do?”

"If we were children, the process would be called ‘grooming’. It has little to do with the well-being of the MP or the party. Most of the approaches are coming from the remnants of the Blair Witch-Way Project, looking for a way back to power. Their interests are more in shafting the Labour Party than in saving it."

I suspect it's going to be a very silly silly season...

www.newstatesman.com - Dark days for Brown

First my thanks to Sian Berry who has been a regular contributor on newstatesman.com since we relaunched on 30 November 2006.

Having spent a great deal of the past 18 months in the public eye as Green co-principal speaker and then as their candidate in the London mayoral elections, she is off to work in a key role in her party's press office. We wish her well. You can read her final blog entry here.

Another farewell goes to Tom Quinn who came over here from California to do a work placement. Tom is an excellent writer who turned his wry gaze on both his own religion, Mormonism, but also on a number of other subjects including the curious tale of Stuart Hill
who declared his remote island in the Shetlands to be independent of the United Kingdom to the Voodoo-esque religion of Umbanda.

Look out too for our article on the suffragettes. To mark the 150th anniversary of the birth of Emmeline Pankhurst we asked author Frances Pugh to write on the contribution of the Women's Social and Political Union and that of Mrs Pankhurst in particular.

Now, news someone ripped the head off Hitler's figure in the Berlin Tussauds put me in a brief reverie.

Hitler's head was ripped off at the Berlin branch of Madame Tussauds

For, a few years ago, I spent some time working at the more famous London branch of the waxworks museum.

It was 1993 and, thanks to the combined efforts of John Major and Norman Lamont, the only job I could find after graduating was as a 'guide'.

This basically meant standing for hours on end saying 'Don't touch that' to irritating tourists as they tried to feel up Kylie Minogue. Every half an hour someone would come up to you and prod you in the ribs saying: "Are you real?". It was really, really funny.

In the Baker Street Tussauds was a Hitler too but he was kept behind a glass case for fear of people spitting on him.

In another room there was a likeness of Yasser Arafat and one day a party of Orthodox Israelis came round the museum and lined up to be photographed throttling him and - despite my best efforts - Yasser looked quite dishevelled by the end.

He kept his head though.

Of course the Berlin episode continues because the ever-adept marketing lot at Tussauds are insisting on courting more controversy by sticking the fuhrer's head back on.

I think they should stop counting euros for a few minutes and consider the remark by a German MP, Frank Zimmermann, who said the decapitation was of much more artistic value than putting it on display in the first place.

There's not much room for art in a waxworks museum though.

www.newstatesman.com - Hitler's head