New Statesman

On 12 September, at two locations straddling Camden Road, the main contenders in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election held their campaign launches.

In February 2010, the historian Dominic Sandbrook wrote a counterfactual “what if” column, imagining how the country might look in five years’ time if David Cameron became prime minister.

I am sitting in my mother’s kitchen late in the evening when I hear the peep of a whistle as a train emerges, half a mile away, from the tunnel just before East Finchley Tube Station.

It was nice of Emmanuel Macron to let us borrow it – the Bayeux Tapestry, or the tale of how the Normans (with some help from the Bretons and the Picards) invaded and conquered England, a short millennium ago.

Do you want to see a truly bleak film about dementia and the end of life?

At what point does mere exhaustion over-end political analysis?

It was early Monday afternoon when I heard the news about Andy Burnham’s father.

We are all Janeites now.

When my wife told me she was pregnant, I started thinking about death.

“Let us be clear: artificial intelligence and robotics are the most transformational technologies in the history of humanity,” Bernie Sanders told the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington DC yesterday (15 September).

My brother messaged: “Just watching the news.

Love and religion: natural bedfellows?

In the midst of the furious controversy surrounding Naza, a new documentary by Israeli co-directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor, the film has drawn largely predictable reactions within Israel.

“Westminster City Council is NOT planning to stop you from standing up in the pub,” came the outraged response on X from the Westminster councillor Timothy Barnes in August, when the row over the proposed limit on “vertical drinking” in Soho first broke.

At 2.03am on 26 September 2022, a seismic monitoring station on the edge of the Arctic Circle detected a powerful tremor  at the  bottom of the Baltic Sea.

Donald Trump wanted us to share in a collective delusion.

There are some things in politics you never really expect to see.

The Cross Keys Inn in Sedbergh, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, is an odd location for a column titled “Beer and Sandwiches” – because it doesn’t sell any alcohol.

An extraordinary novelist needs an exceptional biographer; only Hermione Lee can do Anita Brookner justice.

I – along with many others, recent polling suggests – applaud Ed Miliband’s action against the illegal and terrifying Israeli settlement activity in the West Bank (Politics, 11 September).

Have you heard the one about the Christmas tree in Burton Green?

The wise travelling vagrant, the adulterous East End cockney bounder and the prize posh shit – can the mess of life truly produce such clear, predictable, Thackerayan archetypes?

How did Sydney Sweeney, the 29-year-old American actress of fluctuating talent, accumulate an estimated fortune of $40m?

Two signs mark the entrance to Piddington, east Oxfordshire.

Andy Burnham’s Labour has generally been a calmer place since he took over.

In the winter of 2022, millions of people around the world were having fun with a new chatbot called ChatGPT.

Why vote Tory but not Reform?

The fallout from Reform’s latest scandal, John Healey’s first major speech as Chancellor and Ukraine’s plan to tax porn stars.

Labour’s missing money metaphor, the millionaires still getting benefits and Dyson’s £420 toothbrush.

Poor Micheál, who may have expected it from Joe Biden – that 20th-century Irish catholic.

It has long been fashionable for politicians and commentators to worry about the “Americanisation” of British politics.

What would Seven Up!

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband has unveiled the biggest reset in UK relations with Israel for decades, and, in typical fashion, is putting his stamp on his new role.

This week was Andy Burnham’s first in the Commons as Prime Minister, facing his inaugural head to head with Kemi Badenoch at PMQs.

Fuchsia Dunlop has dedicated much of her life to eating Chinese food.

I often sit on the front bench listening to debates on business and economic policy, irked by the way politicians talk about how we grow our economy.

It’s nearly a year since Zack Polanski took the reins of the Green party.

Andy Burnham wants to redesign and rebuild Britain.

Whatever their weaknesses – and they inevitably all have some – it is only right for a country to establish and follow a set of rules for fiscal policy.

Whatever their weaknesses – and they inevitably all have some – it is only right for a country to establish and follow a set of rules for fiscal policy.

National resilience has always depended on critical infrastructure.

Alexei Sayle has never much cared for a conventional view of the world.

In 2011, Luke Harding was ordered to leave Russia – the first Western journalist to be exiled since the fall of the Soviet Union.

Most people would say that Britain is, by and large, a liberal country.

The reading habits of politicians, like their sexual proclivities, are largely hidden from public view until we are offered brief, revealing glimpses of their inner lives and sometimes unexpected private pleasures.

“There is an earth-shattering moment in every white boy’s life when he discovers UNIQLO,” tweeted the prolific shitposter Donald Boat in April 2022.

“There is an earth-shattering moment in every white boy’s life when he discovers UNIQLO,” tweeted the prolific shitposter Donald Boat in April 2022.

At Reform Party Conference this month, the only subject journalists wanted to talk about was the donor scandal.

When Andy Burnham stood on the steps of Downing Street on his first day as Prime Minister, he pledged to build “a new economic model” for the UK.