New Statesman -

Please, let�s not do God

Christopher Hitchens — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 11:47:35 GMT

The Vanity Fair columnist and author of God is not great on Tony Blair's new faith foundation

I stipulate that for purely secular reasons I still admire Tony Blair for standing by the peoples of Afghanistan and Iraq and Sierra Leone against the various combinations of tyranny and aggression with which they were confronted. (The refusal to �do God�, as we are apparently stuck with this irritating phrase, neither enhanced nor inhibited the execution of those admirable policies.) But far more irritating is Blair�s new banality, which [...]

Michael Foot v the New Statesman

Christopher Hitchens — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:22:07 GMT

In 1978 Bruce Page, the editor of the New Statesman, reprinted extracts from a stirring speech made by Michael Foot as a Labour rebel in 1968. Foot's criticisms contrasted starkly with his position a decade later - as a leading member of the Labour government - on its economic policy. Foot sent a vituperative letter in his own defence, printed the following week. It ended with a flick of contempt at a staff journalist, Christopher Hitchens, who responded similarly.

The New Statesman

6 October 1978

Extracts from a speech by Mr Michael Foot, MP at the Labour party conference in 1968:

"The best socialist way to pay this country's debts, to make us independent, is to plan for full national production, and we are not doing that now. The deliberate policy of the Government is not to plan for full national production, and that is why the unemployment figures [...]

Just give peace a chance?

Christopher Hitchens — Thu, 15 May 2008 12:00:00 GMT

The Second World War was wrong and avoidable, argues Nicholson Baker, and through the criminal belligerence of Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt brought catastrophe and death to tens of millions

Human Smoke, Nicholson Baker, Simon & Schuster, 566pp, �20

The very title of this book, Human Smoke, is either very courageous or very tasteless (or conceivably both), and Nicholson Baker waits until his very last page to give us the origin of it. It is taken from the postwar interrogation of General Franz Halder, a mutinous German officer who was incarcerated in Dachau late in the war and "saw [...]

Iraq Flexes Arab Muscle

Christopher Hitchens — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 10:24:00 GMT

In 1976 Christopher Hitchens saw Saddam as an up-and-coming secular socialist who would transform Iraq into a progressive model for the rest of the Middle East

From The New Statesman 2 April 1976

Hitchens, now an American citizen, remains one of the fiercest and most unrepentant enthusiasts for the US-British overthrow of Saddam Hussein. But, back in 1976, when working for the New Statesman, he took a more admiring view of the Iraqi dictator, as this article shows. Young Hitchens saw Saddam as an up-and-coming secular socialist who would transform Iraq into a progressive model for [...]

Am I a dwarf or a horseman?

Christopher Hitchens — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 12:00:00 GMT

It's an honour to be mentioned in the same breath as Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris. We could become known as the Four Horsemen of the Counter-Apocalypse

The departure of Tony Blair is a huge gratification to all those who want a quiet life and all those who wish that Britain would be a mediocre power. Ever since his Chicago speech in 1999, when he celebrated the downfall of Milosevic and warned of an inevitable confrontation with Saddam Hussein - this at a time when George W Bush was governor of Texas - he has been important [...]

Scotland - nation or state?

Christopher Hitchens — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 12:00:00 GMT

The New Statesman 12 December 1975
Scotland may soon celebrate the 300th anniversary of its Act of Union with England by making the Scottish National Party the largest force in the regional assembly. Thirty-two years ago, after Harold Wilson's Labour government in London embraced devolution, the New Statesman's staff writer Christopher Hitchens took Scotland's feverish temperature. His despatch on the mood north of the border was premature, but it may yet prove prophetic.
Selected by Robert Taylor

During an interlude of concern about the change in currency of 1826, Sir Walter Scott wrote that �we had better remain in union with England, even at the risk of becoming a subordinate species of Northumberland as far as national consequence is concerned, than remedy ourselves by even hinting at the possibility of a rupture�. It would be safe to say at the moment that there is no Scots politician [...]