Section: New Statesman (The United Kingdom)
Craig Oliver, Cameron’s attack dog, finally bites
A new book reveals the spiteful after life of Downing Street’s unlikely spin doctor. It must be hard being a spin doctor: always in the shadows but always on-message. The murky control that the role requires might explain why David Cameron’s former director of communications Craig Oliver has rushed out his political memoirs so soon...
Why is Germany throwing a wild card into the UN leadership race?
An eleventh-hour, unofficial candidate threatens to destabilise the contest. Hopes that the UN might appoint its first woman Secretary-General are about to be dealt a potentially fatal blow, if rumours that began circulating in New York at the end of last week are anything to go by. Experienced UN reporters claimed on Friday that Hungary, Latvia...
How Putin conned us into thinking Russia is a superpower again
Deeply disturbing things have happened during the Putin years in Russia, but his gamble has paid off. Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin has been busy during recent years. Here is a partial list of what he has achieved. He has: 1) recaptured Crimea, the single bit of territory the Russian people most regretted losing after the Soviet Union collapsed;...
This week’s magazine | Syria’s world war
A first look at this week’s issue. Syria’s world war 2 – 8 September Cover story: Syria’s world war. John Jenkins on how the West allowed Russia and Iran to take control. John Simpson: Putin’s bold gambit in Syria has fooled us all into thinking that Russia is a superpower again. Politics: George Eaton on why Theresa...
Is Donald Trump finally imploding?
It is looking like this might finally be the end for the Republican party’s ill-fated Trump experiment. I laughed last June, when that orange ignoramus, with his ridiculous hair and impossible pomposity, descended the escalator into the lobby of Trump Tower in New York to the tune of Neil Young’s “Keep On Rockin’ In The Free...
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and why Russia is such a big part of the US election
What do claims about the Republican candidate’s relationship with America’s old foe mean for the race to the presidency? Back in 2012, Barack Obama mocked his Republican rival, Mitt Romney, for calling Russia the United States’ “number one geopolitical foe”. “The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back,” the...
The slacker’s sanctuary: in Berlin, without a job or a plan
A Brexit exile in Berlin tries to adjust to life, and heads to German lessons alongside Polish workers, fashionable Swedes and Syrian refugees. Just over a month ago, I quit my job in London, packed as many clothes as I could into two suitcases and left the UK for Berlin. Exactly a week after I arrived, Britain voted to leave the European Union...
The murder of fearless journalist Pavel Sheremet must be solved – but Ukraine needs more
Sheremet was blown up as he drove to host a morning radio programme On 20th of July Kiev was shaken by the news of the assassination of the respected Belarusian journalist Pavel Sheremet. Outside the ex-Soviet republics he was hardly known. Yet the murder is one that the West should reflect on, as it could do much to aggravate the...
A renaissance of conductorless orchestras reveals the limits of traditional leadership
What could the modern counterparts of the first conductor-free orchestras, once a socialist utopian vision, teach our politicians today? Moscow, 1922. In the bitterly cold first months of the year, word spreads among concert-goers of an innovative concert soon to be held in the Hall of Columns in the House of Trade Unions, in the Kremlin. The...
Time to bury Economic Man: why we make political decisions based on emotions over facts
The importance of emotions over “facts” is something that the Leave campaign seemed instinctively to understand. In a recent BBC documentary a woman stood crying in front of a selection of potatoes at the supermarket. There was a dizzying array of potatoes on offer – but she just couldn’t choose between them. The presenter, David Eagleman,...
