I very much enjoyed John Bew’s extended essay on Britain’s decline (Cover Story, 13 March). His diagnosis of our political and economic malaise is grounded in his sweeping description of the historical context. I accept his conclusion that “the current social contract is unsustainable”, but fear for the future on three grounds. First, that this case has to be made by politicians – not just once but as a message consistently driven home. One only has to think of the moments when this has been done before – Chatham, Gladstone, Lloyd George, Churchill – to realise that there is nobody of the standing or inclination to pick up the torch. (This is an opportunity, incidentally, that the two legacy parties are probably far better placed to take on than the insurgents.) Second, our political machinery is now so atrophied that government is incapable of delivering change of anything like this magnitude. Third, even if – to adapt William Pitt’s phrase – England were to save herself, it is unlikely she could now save Europe by her example, as our friends and necessary allies are assailed by the destructive populism of left and right.
Ted Morris, London E14
The next step
John Bew’s excellent essay is best read as an intellectual warning rather than a programme for renewal of the state. His survey of past crises in Britain’s evolution is interesting and compelling, and his central claim, that the country is entering a new structural disruption, deserves serious attention.
Bew rightly identifies that challenges, from social welfare to defence, energy and borders, cannot be treated as isolated policy questions. They are interconnected questions of national power and therefore of grand strategy. Yet the essay stops at this recognition. The crucial step beyond diagnosis – designing institutions and mechanisms capable of sustaining strategic thought and action – is unexplored.
Meeting a disruption on the scale implied in the essay would require both institutional reform and a shift in mindset among our governing elites. Grand strategy should not be episodic or improvised; it needs consistent application over time, and institutions staffed by those capable of coordinating and adapting economic, technological and military power as a coherent, integrated and dynamic programme. Such characteristics are absent from our political leaders, administrators and institutions, which seem mired in unresponsive, technocratic managerialism.
The question for Britain is whether we have the energy and imagination to build the capabilities required to generate a strategic plan, before the challenges of the fourth disruption overwhelm us.
Robert Ross, Sutton Veny, Wiltshire
Priced out of play
A rousing Editor’s Note this week (13 March), utilising my favourite sport, football, as a vehicle through which we can begin to explain the horror of change. I first saw my beloved Manchester United at Old Trafford 74 years ago. I watched the young Charltons training in my local park. I choked back the tears of an 11-year-old when my heroes died in Munich. I stayed true, and still do, yet the simple joy has been knocked out of football. I was cajoled into wanting and needing thrills, cappuccinos and this year’s strips. The crowds changed; the players no longer hopeful locals. The beneficiaries? Well, the same as those who own our NHS, the water companies, the care homes… Be grateful, Tom, for the experience you had with your brother. It may yet rouse you and the rest of us into rejecting the soulless exploitation of our joys and our needs.
John Teller, Bristol
Healey’s moment
Ailbhe Rea’s interview with John Healey (The NS Interview, 13 March) reinforced my view that he would make a good Labour leader. I remember reading in the national papers that he was being mooted as a “unity” candidate and found myself breathing a sigh of relief. He has both gravitas and a reassuring air. For now, of course, his nous is being fully utilised as Defence Secretary. But if Labour does tank in the May elections, his time may yet come.
Judith A Daniels, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk
Notes on a small island
On Friday I bought the New Statesman and came across Katie Stallard’s column about a place I had never heard of (World View, 13 March). By Saturday morning, millions of people had heard of Kharg Island. Thanks to Stallard, New Statesman readers could tell people in pubs and cafés across the country about the significance of Kharg Island.
Ivor Morgan, Lincoln
We need to talk about men
There is an important common thread between two articles from the latest edition: Pippa Bailey’s column on porn (Out of the Ordinary) and Nicholas Harris’s review of Louis Theroux’s manosphere documentary (The New Society, both 13 March). If the issues raised are to have any chance of being effectively addressed, the question of how we raise adolescent boys will be central.
For too long, we have pretended that adult authority could manage a process of sublimation from innocent child to mature adult. Of course, our own experience should have warned us that this was nonsense. British society has been grudgingly creeping towards a more responsible approach to how young people learn about sex and relationships. We now need a step change. Without it, our concerns about porn and the “manosphere” amount to no more than hand-wringing, and our solutions amount only to censorship.
Dr Richard Crombie, Carnforth, Lancashire
A noise complaint
I was fascinated by Kate Mossman’s thoughts about Alice Coltrane (The New Society, 13 March). After John’s death, Alice agreed to talk to me about her late husband for a documentary I was making about his life. She followed up that meeting with an invitation to attend a service at the John Coltrane Church in San Francisco, which she had set up. It combined conservative religious ritual with a liturgy that incorporated music and lyrics from John’s 1965 free-jazz masterpiece A Love Supreme, recorded two years before his death. It features the incomparable quartet: Coltrane (saxophone), McCoy Tyner (piano), Elvin Jones (drums) and Jimmy Garrison (bass). It would be harsh to blame Alice for John’s late-life move towards transcendent spirituality and musical abstraction, but this was clearly not to McCoy Tyner’s taste. After Alice took over from him as pianist, he went on record as saying, “All I could hear was a lot of noise.”
David Perry, Cambridge
Don’t follow leaders…
The prospect of anyone from Reform UK having access to my bedroom, as Rachel Cunliffe suggests (Future Perfect, 13 March), fills me with horror. As Bob Dylan wrote, “You don’t need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” My thinking about relationships was influenced by the eloquence and simplicity with which Joni Mitchell sang about what went on between men and women: “We don’t need no piece of paper from the city hall keeping us tied and true.”
Les Bright, Exeter, Devon
Masterly observation project
May I join the flurry of praise for New Statesman writers by putting in a word for Anoosh Chakelian. Her thoughtful observational reporting has revived the ethos of the long-lost New Society magazine.
David Griffiths, Huddersfield
Write to letters@newstatesman.co.uk
We reserve the right to edit letters
[Further reading: The EU won’t save Rachel Reeves]
Content from our partners
Related
This article appears in the 18 Mar 2026 issue of the New Statesman, The new world war
Join the debate
Subscribe here to comment