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Having pined for so long for the top job, Boris Johnson appears to have little idea of what to do with it.
A selection of the best letters received from our readers this week. Email letters@newstatesman.co.uk to have your thoughts voiced in the New Statesman magazine.
Officials and aides struggle to work out what Downing Street wants – especially when there's no “people-pleasing” option.
Inflicting a defective vaccine on millions would damage the immunisation campaign, and gift ammunition to anti-vaxxers.
The Covid months of confinement – appreciating nature, reading, helping the elderly – present an opportunity to “think like a Brontë”.
As the continent enters a second stage of the virus, it may look back fondly on the past summer as relatively benign.
There are three key reasons to question the new consensus that Joe Biden will become president.
I have no idea where he was going in the picture – but it's nice to see him now that he's gone.
How PSG, a Qatari soft-power project, were transformed from one of French football’s perennial underachievers into a powerhouse of the game.
Modern technology has not only enabled new ways of having babies; it has transformed how we think about the old-fashioned method of procreation.
Your weekly dose of gossip from around Westminster.
The late US national security adviser possessed a philosophy of government from which we could learn.
Matt Hancock says the replacement for the disgraced Public Health England will be “world-renowned”. Renowned in the same way as King Harold's performance in 1066?
This year, 210 titles were held back until September, causing chaos for publicity teams and bookshops, and leaving authors disappointed.
New Statesman writers on how the Covid-19 pandemic will transform our way of life.
The party has successfully made itself the symbolic expression of almost all of Scotland’s overlapping memories, experiences and anxieties.
The turmoil in the nation is reawakening memories of conflicts between the Ottoman empire and Arab nationalists.
One of the few certainties of our time is that digital platforms will continue to thrive. The only question is quite how far their logic will penetrate our lives.
The virus exposed deep fractures in the UK’s society and politics, and the government’s mismanagement of the crisis made Britain a global laughing stock. It is time to break out of this humiliation.
The thick spike proteins of Covid-19 have latched on to poverty, inequality and racism. There has to be a better politics than this.
As Shi Zhengli, a Chinese virologist known as “the bat woman of Wuhan”, has warned, Covid-19 is merely one of many lethal challenges.
For two decades, cheap labour in China drove consumer prices down. But when goods are produced in a world of fear and geopolitical rivalry, their origins, not just their cost, really matter.
Covid-19 has changed everything. If we choose the wrong path not only will we suffer the consequences, but so too will many generations to come.
The left should not welcome the fantasy of decoupling. Neither climate change nor future pandemics stop at borders.
If we are serious about learning from coronavirus, we will have to do more than applaud “essential workers” from our windows or change our priorities as individuals.
The Russian writer's tales of stasis, uncertainty and irresolution determined the path of 20th-century fiction.
A new poem by Paul Bailey.
Paul Preston’s A People Betrayed explores decades of misrule in modern Spain.
The Booker-shortlisted author's second novel captures the pull of an obsessive relationship.
The novel begins in 1967, in the clubs of London's psychedelic music scene, as the band find their groove amid the cultural revolution of the 1960s.
In his new book, Gene Sperling shows how paying living wages and giving people agency over their lives can create a more dynamic economy.
For Francis Towne, seeing the landscape with a clear eye was more important than being stirred by it.
The brilliantly trippy Seventies masterpiece suits the growing feeling that life itself is somehow glitching, looping, or not making sense.
Lucy Prebble and Billie Piper's dark comedy is absolutely bulging with people who, though basically decent and likeable, are also behaving very stupidly and, sometimes, incredibly badly.
There's something old-fashioned, quintessentially – and wistfully – late 20th century about these conversations.
In Lebanon more than elsewhere, wine and politics are always intertwined.
I am building not so much castles in the air as one-bedroom flats.
What started as a distraction morphed into a bona fide hobby – I spent hours reading through digital exchanges, from outpourings to quick back-and-forths.
The actor talks Serge Gainsbourg, childhood nostalgia, and her mother's wisdom.
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