New Statesman

Ken Burns’ amiability is evident early. He thanked me for attending a small press availability for his new series – The American Revolution (six two-hour episodes a decade in the making, due on the BBC later this year) – before we had met. He thanked me again later on for a question I asked in the Q&A before we sat down to talk. None of this was for show. It comes naturally, and may explain how he gets half of Hollywood to lend their voices to his films and help make them what they are: the

President Trump has made a habit of publicly shaming, if not outright insulting, European leaders. The usual response has been a polite smile, coupled with acceptance of American demands: higher defence spending (read: purchasing more US weapons), acquiescence to unilateral tariffs, and tolerance of limited EU regulation of major “Big Tech” platforms. During Trump’s first term, the EU was far more assertive vis-à-vis the United States. However, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has left Europe painfu

Among the assets of the 39-year-old billionaire William Bruce Harrison are a former racecourse, an 83,000-acre ranch and 19 mountains. Until 2024, Harrison, the son of a Texas oil dynasty, was also the ultimate beneficial owner of a construction company, ISG. The firm was a major supplier to the British state, working on everything from courts and hospitals to the House of Commons; its government contracts paid out £1.85bn over a decade.  In September 2024, ISG collapsed into administration,

The fight over Labour’s future is not just playing out in Westminster, it is also unfolding among the party’s youngest members. The results of this year’s Young Labour and Labour Students contests offer an early indication of where the party may be heading. These elections determine the national committees for Young Labour and Labour Students – bodies that, while often dismissed as minor, “careerist” and “cliquey” internal structures, actually sit at the intersection of representation and org

In February, Rupert Lowe announced that his pressure group Restore Britain would formally become a political party. Within a few weeks it claimed to have over 100,000 registered members. It has one MP, no local associations, and a platform designed to appeal almost exclusively to those who feel Nigel Farage has lost his edge. What it does have is a large and energetic social media following, which in 2026 might be all a political party needs. Labour spent much of February consumed by a proced

As the conflict with Iran stretches into its fifth week, Trump administration officials are increasingly looking for an off-ramp. Donald Trump has walked back his demand that Tehran reopen the Strait of Hormuz before any ceasefire, whilst US Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared that America’s war aims are to destroy Iran’s armed forces and ballistic missiles – conveniently forgetting previous promises of regime change. A “day after” is apparently in sight. But in war, the enemy always has

When Israel and the US attacked Iran, there were bound to be consequences for the countries that depended on Gulf oil and gas. Between them, China and India take more than 50 per cent of the oil going through the Strait of Hormuz, with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan making up much of the rest. The US doesn’t, because it is energy-independent – the largest oil producer in the world and the biggest exporter of LNG gas. Britain gets very little oil or gas at all through the Strait of Hormuz. Why,

Donald Trump delivered a prime-time address from the White House on 1 April promising that the war with Iran would be over “very shortly” while also appearing to signal that he planned to escalate the conflict, vowing to hit the country “extremely hard” in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, thousands more American troops have arrived in the region in recent days, including the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit and paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne Division, as the US president is reportedly weighing op

In the early 1780s, on the Île-d’Aix, a small island off France’s western coast, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos began writing his best-known work, Les Liaisons Dangereuses. It would have been difficult for Laclos to imagine that a theatre production of the novel would captivate audiences close to 250 years on. After all, he was a failed playwright; his comedy-opera libretto Ernestine (1777) received only a single public performance, albeit one attended by Marie Antoinette. However, his epistolary no

Donald Trump’s latest comments on the war in Iran – the one that he started in February alongside Benjamin Netanyahu – raise yet more questions about the president’s grasp of global politics. In a broadcast to the American people, he claimed that it is now up to Britain, and other non-combatant countries, to sort out the mess in the Strait of Hormuz. He has also suggested that the US could withdraw from Nato. It is yet another blow in a Brit- and Euro-bashing campaign by key US administration

When most people first encounter Romeo and Juliet, in the tumultuous years of adolescence, the play can seem an unjust portrayal of youthful love. How little these controlling parents understand this devoted couple; how sparing they are in their sympathy, dismissing the lovers as children incapable of grasping the depth of romance. To young readers, such incomprehension appears to be maturity’s greatest failing. In adulthood, however, those teenage convictions come into sharper focus – these

Donald Trump enjoys waging war and doesn’t take it very seriously. Hours before his primetime speech at 9pm last night, for which CBS interrupted its Survivor television show, the President told a lunch that later he would “basically tell everyone how great I am”. So it proved. We learnt little about how this is all going to end. He flipped between a promise that the war would be over soon and finished with a threat to send Iran back to the “Stone Ages – where they belong”.  Trump h

When it comes to military affairs, wars sometimes act as time portals. Waged in the present, they frequently reflect the powerful pull of the past. They may also provide glimpses of the future of conflict, but too often it is the past that dominates the present. The current war against Iran is no exception, for the long American love affair with strategic bombing – which the Israelis have eagerly imported from the US military, and which is now heavily complemented by missiles – remains on full d

History was made in 1923 as Nancy Astor stood to speak from the green leather benches. The first Private Member’s Bill introduced by a woman forced parliament to confront a question that may seem familiar. Should children be allowed access to something that can be fun and socially lubricating, but also addictive, toxic in high quantities and capable of shaping lifelong habits?  Astor’s bill passed: parliament banned the sale of alcohol to anyone under 18. A century later, Westminster is askin

Amid the noise from the war in Iran, as oil and gas prices soar then fluctuate, and physical scarcity looms round the corner, you may have missed some other global energy news. In India this week, the government announced that in response to the conflict it will accelerate the commissioning of new wind farms and energy ​storage systems. China’s top battery manufacturers have gained more than $70bn in market capitalisation in the last month. The head of the International Energy Agency, the IEA, h

As the UK braces itself for the oil shock waves racing towards its shores, Donald Trump appears to be contemplating a ground invasion of Iran in order to pressure the regime to fully re-open the Strait of Hormuz. That is if he doesn’t abandon the war altogether. not The US president’s recent messaging on the war, fired off via social media posts, has been wildly incoherent. On 31 March, he posted that countries like the UK were on their own: “You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yo

If the polls are to be believed, Wales is on course for its first non-Labour government in 27 years after the 7 May Senedd elections. The latest YouGov MRP poll puts Plaid Cymru on course to win 43 seats – just six short of the 49 needed for a majority. According to the same poll, the Green Party is projected to make a breakthrough, winning 10 of the 96 seats on offer (the party currently has no members of the Senedd). Plaid Cymru and the Green Party should, in theory, be natural allies. Both

At what point do you know you’ve done enough with your theatre production? Is it after you sell-out on all nights of the run? Or perhaps after winning the Olivier, Tony and Grammy awards? Kinky Boots has achieved all of those things, but its director Nikolai Foster still wants more. The acclaimed performance is now back and rebooted at the London Coliseum. The story centres on Charlie Price, played by 2010 X Factor-winner Matt Cardle, who is torn between his father’s failing shoe factory in N

Keir Starmer delivered one of his updates on the Iran war this morning, in another press conference from Downing Street. But this one felt different. The Prime Minister didn’t just give new information about the British effort – diplomatically and militarily – to restore freedom of navigation in the Middle East (a task that he underlined “will not be easy”), nor did he just repeat his important refrain that “this is not our war” and that the UK “will not be dragged” into it. He did something

Karl Turner, the MP for Hull, has lost the Labour whip. Described by colleagues in the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) as “a 24-hour rolling news show all on his own”, Turner has been an outspoken critic of the government on a number of areas, especially its plans to limit jury trials in order to ease the courts backlog. He was informed by email yesterday that he had been suspended, after conduct warnings, because of complaints from colleagues. The final straw was a podcast appearance by Tur