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'No wonder Jordan is such a strange shape: like an animal’s head in profile, snout tipped back and mouth wide open, perhaps in laughter, perhaps in fear.'
My postcard from the Hashemite Kingdom, feat. lost luggage, the Baptism of Jesus and Glubb Pasha: newstatesman.com/international-…
My postcard from the Hashemite Kingdom, feat. lost luggage, the Baptism of Jesus and Glubb Pasha: newstatesman.com/international-…
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Great reporting on the Cornish nationalists who are now worried that “sons of Cornwall” is sexist
“Some of our moodier political commentators have spoken darkly of the “Ulsterisation” of the UK in recent years, sensing a hooded, sectarian violence abroad… Kernow-isation continues apace.”
On Cornwall and Cornish nationalism
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🔔 Personal news news: I'm stoked to be joining the @NewStatesman as executive editor, working with @TomMcTague @tanjil_rashid_ @piptbailey and the team. I'll be writing, talking and podcasting about the state of the world and maybe some ⚽️. Get a sub: secure.newstatesman.com/subscribe
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“Some of our moodier political commentators have spoken darkly of the “Ulsterisation” of the UK in recent years, sensing a hooded, sectarian violence abroad… Kernow-isation continues apace.”
On Cornwall and Cornish nationalism
On Cornwall and Cornish nationalism
Kernow-isation is coming for Britain, by @nickpaulharris
Over pasties at lunch, I begin to sense foreboding over the afternoon motions. “I just hope that the next part is respectful and reasonable…” says one flat-capped party member, sucking on a vape outside the building. On the conference agenda, I spot the “NAME CHANGE” motion. This had been prompted at National Executive level by the “gender bias” and “ethno-nationalist tone” of Mebyon Kernow (“sons of Cornwall”). There are two proposed alternatives: Medhoryon Kernow, meaning something approximate to “speakers for Cornwall”, and Movyans Kernow, “a movement for Cornwall”. Members gather to debate the motion, and several have brought Cornish dictionaries with them.
Sam opposes the change – he thinks, in the middle of an election cycle, that it is a distraction from Mebyon Kernow’s real goals (he adds, for clarity, “I’m not a misogynist and I’m not an ethno-nationalist”). Sheila disagrees – “I am a woman, and I didn’t join MK for many years, because of the name.” One drawly man in a bandana suggests adapting the English to “suns of Cornwall”, because we all “give out light, like a star or a flame”. But a woman, also in a bandana, suggests that any name change might seem tokenistic unless the party materially supports “Flinta” people (female, lesbian, intersex, non-binary, transgender and agender). newstatesman.com/politics/uk-po…
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'In a personal manifesto that I intend to republish in conversation at some point, Ethan tells a party bore who accuses him of using humour as a defence mechanism: “Yeah, no, I do, I think. I think I use it as a defence mechanism against being fucking boring!”'
Enjoyed this one
Enjoyed this one
Leo Reich – the writer and star of It Gets Worse, and a rising star in stand-up comedy – has been keen to stress that his is not a generational sitcom, but it’s doing a very good impression of one. Reich’s own character, Ethan, and his two flatmate friends, Sam (Olive Gray) and Abi (Emily Fairn), are geriatric Gen Z, stranded in their purgatorial mid-twenties, and burning through the fires of youth either in the hope of accessing an adulthood they picture as heavenly or to put off a maturity they fear will be hellish. They have had to move out of their flat-share because of a rent rise, which supplies the series’s motion, forcing these characters to island hop between housing arrangements throughout London: a hurried cohabitation with a crap boyfriend; a commune-squat that sounds more fun than it is.
@nickpaulharris
newstatesman.com/culture/tv/202…
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We have published an open letter against the removal of Sally Rooney’s books from sale in Britain.
Between them, the signatories to the New Statesman open letter have won every major literary prize, from the Booker to the Pulitzer. They include Nobel laureates: Anne Carson, the he literature award; Annie Ernaux, and JM Coetzee. These are voices from all over the world, including pre-eminent novelists: Julian Barnes, Zadie Smith, Jeanette Winterson, George Saunders, Ben Lerner and many more. Key figures in the wider Rooneyverse are signed up: Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, Alison Oliver, Fionn O’Shea and Lenny Abrahamson. Among the award-winning actors, filmmakers, and screenwriters who have signed include: Tilda Swinton, Susan Sarandon, Jessie Buckley, Jonathan Glazer, Armando Iannucci and Sharon Horgan. In total, over 150 major figures have signed.
Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist.
Between them, the signatories to the New Statesman open letter have won every major literary prize, from the Booker to the Pulitzer. They include Nobel laureates: Anne Carson, the he literature award; Annie Ernaux, and JM Coetzee. These are voices from all over the world, including pre-eminent novelists: Julian Barnes, Zadie Smith, Jeanette Winterson, George Saunders, Ben Lerner and many more. Key figures in the wider Rooneyverse are signed up: Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones, Alison Oliver, Fionn O’Shea and Lenny Abrahamson. Among the award-winning actors, filmmakers, and screenwriters who have signed include: Tilda Swinton, Susan Sarandon, Jessie Buckley, Jonathan Glazer, Armando Iannucci and Sharon Horgan. In total, over 150 major figures have signed.
Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist.
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We’re very proud to publish this today
OPEN LETTER: Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist. Her books must be available to the public. Their withdrawal from sale, on the basis of ill-conceived and draconian anti terror legislation, is an affront to basic principles of free speech and expression so long taken for . We categorically reject censorship - whether direct or indirect - and urge the government to change course, amending the legislation which has led us to this point of repressive absurdity.
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If you ever sought out the novels of Sally Rooney in bookshops – when that was still possible – you’d know they sit in the fiction stacks adjacent to the novels of another SR whose books have been withdrawn in dastardly political circumstances. Until last week, “Rooney” and “Rushdie” had little in common beyond being shelfmates; now they have more than just a physical proximity.
@tanjil_rashid_: This is censorship by other means newstatesman.com/comment/2026/1…
@tanjil_rashid_: This is censorship by other means newstatesman.com/comment/2026/1…
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Nicholas Harris retweeted
OPEN LETTER: Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist. Her books must be available to the public. Their withdrawal from sale, on the basis of ill-conceived and draconian anti terror legislation, is an affront to basic principles of free speech and expression so long taken for . We categorically reject censorship - whether direct or indirect - and urge the government to change course, amending the legislation which has led us to this point of repressive absurdity.
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FOOL BRITANNIA by @EdConwaySky
While many countries face higher energy costs due to the events in the Middle East and Russia, few have seen quite as big a spike as Britain has. Industrial power costs are comfortably higher than in most developed nations, with domestic costs not ent, this is a function of bad luck and geopolitics. Britain is particularly dependent on natural gas to provide the critical baseload power for its electricity, not to mention much of its domestic heating.
But higher energy costs are also the product of policy. Britain pushed faster and further towards net zero (the goal of diminishing carbon emissions to close to nothing in net terms) than most of its peers. The ambition, held by Labour and Conservative governments, was that the UK should be the global leader in decarbonisation – the flag-bearer for net zero. In one respect, the enterprise was a stunning success – Britain is one of the fastest-decarbonising major economies in the world.
The main catch in – and the cardinal sin of – the make-things-cheap economy is how it affects energy bills. For all that Boris Johnson and Ed Miliband insisted (and as far as I can tell, sincerely believed) that renewables would mean lower costs, the opposite has happened. Unlike solar power, the cost of which fell precipitously as the Chinese mastered the mass production of arrays, wind power has remained comparatively expensive. And so Britain’s ambitious offshore wind programme happened largely thanks to a complex web of subsidies and price guarantees. Those interventions will lock in higher power costs in this country for years.
There is a point – most likely a decade and a half in the future – at which the savings from net zero (less spent on gas and fuels) should outweigh the costs of building all the necessary infrastructure. But for the time being, the policy is expensive – nearly £30bn a year for the next five years, which is the equivalent of an extra 5p on the basic rate of income tax. One of the main reasons net zero is becoming so controversial (and will likely get more controversial) is that the majority of those costs end up on consumer bills.
The other problem is that much of this decarbonisation was achieved through deindustrialisation. In the face of higher energy costs and rising environmental taxes, many manufacturers relocated overseas. Indeed, more than half of Britain’s carbon footprint is now accounted for by imported goods. Paradoxically, the more steel mills and chemicals plants shut down, the better the UK’s environmental credentials, since net zero plans ignore the embedded carbon in our imports and focus solely on what is puffed out of domestic flues and chimneys.
Cover art by Doug Chayka
While many countries face higher energy costs due to the events in the Middle East and Russia, few have seen quite as big a spike as Britain has. Industrial power costs are comfortably higher than in most developed nations, with domestic costs not ent, this is a function of bad luck and geopolitics. Britain is particularly dependent on natural gas to provide the critical baseload power for its electricity, not to mention much of its domestic heating.
But higher energy costs are also the product of policy. Britain pushed faster and further towards net zero (the goal of diminishing carbon emissions to close to nothing in net terms) than most of its peers. The ambition, held by Labour and Conservative governments, was that the UK should be the global leader in decarbonisation – the flag-bearer for net zero. In one respect, the enterprise was a stunning success – Britain is one of the fastest-decarbonising major economies in the world.
The main catch in – and the cardinal sin of – the make-things-cheap economy is how it affects energy bills. For all that Boris Johnson and Ed Miliband insisted (and as far as I can tell, sincerely believed) that renewables would mean lower costs, the opposite has happened. Unlike solar power, the cost of which fell precipitously as the Chinese mastered the mass production of arrays, wind power has remained comparatively expensive. And so Britain’s ambitious offshore wind programme happened largely thanks to a complex web of subsidies and price guarantees. Those interventions will lock in higher power costs in this country for years.
There is a point – most likely a decade and a half in the future – at which the savings from net zero (less spent on gas and fuels) should outweigh the costs of building all the necessary infrastructure. But for the time being, the policy is expensive – nearly £30bn a year for the next five years, which is the equivalent of an extra 5p on the basic rate of income tax. One of the main reasons net zero is becoming so controversial (and will likely get more controversial) is that the majority of those costs end up on consumer bills.
The other problem is that much of this decarbonisation was achieved through deindustrialisation. In the face of higher energy costs and rising environmental taxes, many manufacturers relocated overseas. Indeed, more than half of Britain’s carbon footprint is now accounted for by imported goods. Paradoxically, the more steel mills and chemicals plants shut down, the better the UK’s environmental credentials, since net zero plans ignore the embedded carbon in our imports and focus solely on what is puffed out of domestic flues and chimneys.
Cover art by Doug Chayka
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In Trump’s America, the Death Penalty Has Been Resurrected longreads.com/2026/10/13/tru… via @Longreads
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“Activité, activité, vitesse, vitesse!” Great to hang with Napoleon’s generals 😃
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In the @NewStatesman, we have John Corley, who is serving a life sentence in Louisiana Prison, on Christa Pike's botched execution and what it's like to watch your fellow inmates be executed after 20 years on death row.
An incredible, devastating read.
newstatesman.com/international-…
An incredible, devastating read.
newstatesman.com/international-…
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EXCL: there is concern in the White House that the British govt is trying to ‘spy’ on US officials and Nigel Farage by getting access to Apple’s encrypted data
Details in this week’s NS on the Suspicious Relationship:
Details in this week’s NS on the Suspicious Relationship:
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THE SUSPICIOUS RELATIONSHIP by @freddiejh8
Ask what people in Washington DC think about Burnham and it soon becomes clear that he does not make them think at all. A scoff, a shrug, a quizzical raise of the eyebrow, a look of bored pity: these are the common responses when the oned. “He’s new, and the last one was new, and the one before that was new, and the one before that was new,” a White House official told me. “The thinking is: all right, well, on the current trend, he’ll probably be gone next year, too.”
The high turnover of UK leaders has only added to the idea that Britain has little to contribute – it simply does not have the cash, warships or AI firms to matter much to those in Washington looking at their global chessboard. “Burnham has the weight of the governor of South Dakota,” is how a Maga official put it to me.
Underneath all this is an emotional critique – that successive British governments have been poor custodians of America’s ancestral homeland. The concern is genuine among Maga figures and the tone is proprietorial, as if it were their responsibility to correct what the British elite has got so wrong. The millions of immigrants who have entered Britain over the past decade make the American right shake its head in disappointment. “You go to the UK, and it is not the UK of ten years ago or 20 years ago,” one official lamented.
Earlier this year, a senior administration official was listening to a British counterpart complain about the rise of the radical right in the UK. The Brit blamed disinformation. The American suggested that they take the public on tours of Birmingham and Blackburn to show that the disinformation was wrong and, in fact, those places were ethnically the same as they were in the 1950s. Some in the administration think there is little chance that Britain can recover under Burnham. “You’re an ally. Sort your stuff out, and we’ll get back to you when you have done that,” one White House official said.
Many in the US government hope that Nigel Farage takes Downing Street at the next election. He is seen within Maga as Britain’s best, and probably last, chance. While some on the online right think that Rupert Lowe’s ethno-nationalism is closer to what is needed – Lowe was recently on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast and his posts on X are pushed by Elon Musk – this is not yet a widespread view in the administration. “I see him as a slop purveyor,” one official said. Maga figures are still concerned that Reform lacks a professional operation but, by comparison, they think that Lowe’s Restore is little more than a social media party.
One figure remarked to me that Farage is increasingly thought of as a man standing in a DC bar waiting for someone to recognise him. But he is still seen as being on the same side as Maga. The US government is increasingly protective of right-wingers in Europe who they think are being persecuted by the liberal establishment. It was noted in Washington that when announcing a new centre to counter Russian disinformation in his UN speech, Burnham said he wanted to counter “far-right narratives”. Those narratives are often identical to the administration’s own policy.
Cover art by Cracked Hat
Ask what people in Washington DC think about Burnham and it soon becomes clear that he does not make them think at all. A scoff, a shrug, a quizzical raise of the eyebrow, a look of bored pity: these are the common responses when the oned. “He’s new, and the last one was new, and the one before that was new, and the one before that was new,” a White House official told me. “The thinking is: all right, well, on the current trend, he’ll probably be gone next year, too.”
The high turnover of UK leaders has only added to the idea that Britain has little to contribute – it simply does not have the cash, warships or AI firms to matter much to those in Washington looking at their global chessboard. “Burnham has the weight of the governor of South Dakota,” is how a Maga official put it to me.
Underneath all this is an emotional critique – that successive British governments have been poor custodians of America’s ancestral homeland. The concern is genuine among Maga figures and the tone is proprietorial, as if it were their responsibility to correct what the British elite has got so wrong. The millions of immigrants who have entered Britain over the past decade make the American right shake its head in disappointment. “You go to the UK, and it is not the UK of ten years ago or 20 years ago,” one official lamented.
Earlier this year, a senior administration official was listening to a British counterpart complain about the rise of the radical right in the UK. The Brit blamed disinformation. The American suggested that they take the public on tours of Birmingham and Blackburn to show that the disinformation was wrong and, in fact, those places were ethnically the same as they were in the 1950s. Some in the administration think there is little chance that Britain can recover under Burnham. “You’re an ally. Sort your stuff out, and we’ll get back to you when you have done that,” one White House official said.
Many in the US government hope that Nigel Farage takes Downing Street at the next election. He is seen within Maga as Britain’s best, and probably last, chance. While some on the online right think that Rupert Lowe’s ethno-nationalism is closer to what is needed – Lowe was recently on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast and his posts on X are pushed by Elon Musk – this is not yet a widespread view in the administration. “I see him as a slop purveyor,” one official said. Maga figures are still concerned that Reform lacks a professional operation but, by comparison, they think that Lowe’s Restore is little more than a social media party.
One figure remarked to me that Farage is increasingly thought of as a man standing in a DC bar waiting for someone to recognise him. But he is still seen as being on the same side as Maga. The US government is increasingly protective of right-wingers in Europe who they think are being persecuted by the liberal establishment. It was noted in Washington that when announcing a new centre to counter Russian disinformation in his UN speech, Burnham said he wanted to counter “far-right narratives”. Those narratives are often identical to the administration’s own policy.
Cover art by Cracked Hat
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On the Cornell rape investigation, and on who gets to be believed when they say they’ve been raped, in @NewStatesman this morning
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My interview with @JoyceCarolOates, which was an honour and a joy to do, and which I hope does some justice.
Joyce Carol Oates contradicts herself:
Joyce Carol Oates contradicts herself:
There is something hard to know about Joyce Carol Oates, both because she has said so much and because she says so little. She much sooner asks about your life, family and reading than muses on her own life. When some of her letters were published by her biographer Greg Johnson, she couldn’t read them. “Would you like to read something written by yourself when you were much younger? I think you’d probably be cringing! It’s the sort of thing that is ephemeral – like who cares?”
About her past words, too, there is reticence. She once said a fine fate for writers is dying “with one’s romantic fantasies intact”: what were hers? “I don’t know that I really had any.” But didn’t she say her first stories differed from Hemingway’s because they were “much more romantic”? “I never was writing romance in my fiction.” What about the end of Finnegans Wake, that she reads to her students for its “glorious”, “heartbreaking”, “almost overwhelmingly beautiful emotion” as a character grows old and changes from her husband – has she ever felt like that? “I don’t know how to answer that. That’s a mythic character, not really a specific character.”
@GMonaghan1998: Joyce Carol Oates contradicts herself
newstatesman.com/the-weekend-in…
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There is something hard to know about Joyce Carol Oates, both because she has said so much and because she says so little. She much sooner asks about your life, family and reading than muses on her own life. When some of her letters were published by her biographer Greg Johnson, she couldn’t read them. “Would you like to read something written by yourself when you were much younger? I think you’d probably be cringing! It’s the sort of thing that is ephemeral – like who cares?”
About her past words, too, there is reticence. She once said a fine fate for writers is dying “with one’s romantic fantasies intact”: what were hers? “I don’t know that I really had any.” But didn’t she say her first stories differed from Hemingway’s because they were “much more romantic”? “I never was writing romance in my fiction.” What about the end of Finnegans Wake, that she reads to her students for its “glorious”, “heartbreaking”, “almost overwhelmingly beautiful emotion” as a character grows old and changes from her husband – has she ever felt like that? “I don’t know how to answer that. That’s a mythic character, not really a specific character.”
@GMonaghan1998: Joyce Carol Oates contradicts herself
newstatesman.com/the-weekend-in…
About her past words, too, there is reticence. She once said a fine fate for writers is dying “with one’s romantic fantasies intact”: what were hers? “I don’t know that I really had any.” But didn’t she say her first stories differed from Hemingway’s because they were “much more romantic”? “I never was writing romance in my fiction.” What about the end of Finnegans Wake, that she reads to her students for its “glorious”, “heartbreaking”, “almost overwhelmingly beautiful emotion” as a character grows old and changes from her husband – has she ever felt like that? “I don’t know how to answer that. That’s a mythic character, not really a specific character.”
@GMonaghan1998: Joyce Carol Oates contradicts herself
newstatesman.com/the-weekend-in…
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