To govern is to choose
Last week’s Cover Story by our culture editor Tanjil Rashid, “The Age of Deportation”, seems to have struck a chord with readers, at least judging by our letters inbox. Thank you to all who got in touch, expressing your concerns about the state of British politics and the direction it seems to be travelling. Given the overwhelming number of messages we have received on the topic, we decided to devote most of this week’s letters page to the subject. Please do continue the discussion.
On the face of it, this week’s Cover Story returns to more prosaic matters of politics: who’s up and who’s down in Westminster. And yet, as Andrew Marr explains, the events of the past week have been anything but ordinary. The resignation of Angela Rayner and the dramatic reshuffle that followed have set in motion a series of events that could make or break Keir Starmer’s premiership. “British politics is about to be flung into one of the most convulsive six months in modern memory,” Andrew writes, after speaking to almost all of the major players in this unfolding drama.
The New Statesman will have no official position on the contest now underway to become Labour’s deputy leader. But what we can say is this: we are a magazine of ideas and we hope to hear some in the weeks ahead. This government needs a defining mission around which it can rally both Labour and the country – and it needs to find it quickly. Too much time has been wasted. To govern is to choose, and Starmer’s job is to choose not merely where to ameliorate voters’ concerns, but where to draw the dividing lines on which he intends to battle Farage for the future of this country.
Usually, I would now take the opportunity to run through this week’s magazine, drawing readers’ attention to the pieces that had most grabbed mine. This week, however, I am a little hesitant, the reproachful words of Dewi Williams, from Caernarfon, Gwynedd, still ringing in my ears. Dewi detected a “tone of self-congratulation” in my previous Editor’s Notes. Ouch! I am pleased to report, however, that Dewi did at least enjoy the extract from my new book, Between the Waves: The Hidden History of a Very British Revolution, which we published last week. “Quite fascinating. I look forward to reading the book.” Though Dewi was careful to offer a caveat that made me laugh: “In paperback.” Touché!
I hope Dewi will forgive a few dips into the warm waters of self-congratulation. It was a delight to hear from Daniel Fryd in Leyton, east London, who wrote to say that as a subscriber of two years, he was having “by far the most fun I’ve had reading the New Statesman”. “Finn McRedmond’s column is such a delight that I almost dropped my laptop in the bath while chortling away this evening,” he writes. Hang on: yet another New Statesman bath reader? No one tell Will Lloyd, who reported in his Editor’s Note two weeks ago how “staggered” he was at the number of you who take their Staggers into the tub.
Speaking of Will, I urge readers to find their comfiest chair in order to sit back and enjoy his dispatch from last weekend’s boisterous – and bonkers – Reform rally in Birmingham, which sounds less an end-of-the-pier carnival of Faragism than some kind of GB News bacchanal. Rather him than me. On that subject, in fact, Ross Fitzgerald from Bournemouth writes in with a startling idea for Tanjil and the culture team: “Would love to see you Reform your reviews by featuring ‘Insomniac’ by the UK’s latest pop princess, Andrea Jenkyns.” I’m not sure I know how to respond to that, Ross.
Before I sign off for another week, I want to thank all those who got in touch following last week’s Editor’s Note to offer their own thoughts about that soul-sapping sense of disappointment that now seems to wash over many of us after a trip to the Continent. Les Bright from Exeter, Devon, writes that on a recent walking holiday in Slovenia, the comment he heard most frequently from his fellow walkers from the UK was: “It’s so clean here.” Philip Gibbins, meanwhile, writes how cities like Barcelona and Warsaw, which once felt relatively poor, now seem “more modern, cleaner, more vibrant cities than those in the UK”. Here, surely, is the connecting thread. We are haunted by the spectre of Farage in large part because of this sense of deterioration. If Starmer needs a mission, then, it is staring him in the face: not to make Britain great again, but simply to make it pleasant again. We can only hope.
Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month
[See also: Farage rises. Burnham watches. But Starmer fights on]
Content from our partners
Related
This article appears in the 10 Sep 2025 issue of the New Statesman, The Fight Back
