The Saturday Read

Good morning. Welcome to the Saturday Read. Our Summer Special is out now. Here is the best of the New Statesman to read this weekend. If you’re not subscribed, you can get 2 months for £2 here. Publicly, he denies he is considering one – but privately, he is weighing his options. Ailbhe Rea reports in the Politics Column. At the Clacton count, I came face to face with Nigel Farage’s challenger, writes Anoosh Chakelian.

Good morning. Welcome to the Saturday Read. Here is the best of the New Statesman to read this weekend. If you’re not subscribed, you can get 2 months for £2 here. Phoebe Pascoe on the poets training large language models to write. Ethan Croft’s sketch: our resident sleuth went door-knocking with the only Tory in Britain willing to face down Nigel Farage in the Clacton by-election. Faye Curran writes that war correspondent Sally Hayden’s new collection of dispatches is horrifying and tender.

Good morning. David Runciman has written the cover story, “A Dream of Cambridge”, on the Jason Arday affair. The university’s place in the public imagination is as illusory as Jason Arday’s academic credentials. You can read the piece here. If you’re not subscribed, you can have two months for £2 here . Oceans of virtual ink have been spilled about the case of Jason Arday because it was the right story at the right time to grab the maximum attention.

Good morning. Welcome to the Saturday Read. Here is the best of the New Statesman to read this weekend. If you’re not subscribed, you can get 2 months for £2 here. Alex Niven on Chris Moss’s new book, a travelogue from the places that will decide the country’s future. Will Dunn’s sketch: watch the full horror of our finances unroll before you. Richard Seymour: This summer has proved that some people would rather watch things burn than inconvenience capitalism.

Good morning. Emily Lawford has a scoop about prominent Reform donor and multi-millionaire businessman Arron Banks. Banks hired private investigators to look into Sunday Times journalist Gabriel Pogrund after his reporting about Nigel Farage’s finances, the New Statesman can reveal. Banks did not deny he had launched the probe. “We believe the Sunday Times used hacked information and that was an area of interest.

Good morning. Bruno Maçães has written the cover story, “Europe’s shame”, on the Ceuta crisis. The incursion revealed a continent divided against itself. You can read the piece here. If you’re not subscribed, you can have two months for £2 here. There was a time when you could reasonably expect a national government to comport itself with marginally more sobriety than an anonymous social media account – the kind that is often adorned with the avatar of an ape. That expectation was touchingly naive.

Good morning. Welcome to the Saturday Read. Here is the best of the New Statesman to read this weekend. If you’re not subscribed, you can get 2 months for £2 here. The former Labour leader speaks to Megan Kenyon about Andy Burnham, Sally Rooney and Your Party. France, Spain and England are burning. Where is the climate movement to resist this catastrophe? Our Cold War nightmares have returned as a global arms race, Katie Stallard writes in our cover story. Carlo Rovelli: We created the nuclear monster.

Good morning. Katie Stallard has written the cover story on the new nuclear terror. Our Cold War nightmares have returned as a global arms race. You can read the piece here. If you’re not subscribed, you can have two months for £2 here. The end of the Cold War heralded what some scholars have described as the “golden era” of arms control. From the late 1980s to 2010, Moscow and Washington negotiated successive treaties and dismantled tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.

Good morning. Welcome to the Saturday Read. Here is the best of the New Statesman to read this weekend. If you’re not subscribed, you can get 2 months for £2 here. We have a new PM. In this week’s cover story, Ailbhe Rea wrote that Andy Burnham’s first days in Downing Street showed his determination to do politics differently. Jim Davidson and Nigel Farage represent an England that will not go quietly, Nicholas Harris wrote.

Good morning. Our Ideas Editor Nicholas Harris has written a feature on why Nigel Farage’s Clacton by-election is no laughing matter. Count Binface has stolen the headlines, but the Nigel Farage and the comedian Jim Davidson, whom Nicholas watched perform in Clacton, represent an England that will not go quietly.You can read the piece here. If you’re not subscribed, you can have two months for £2 here. I went because he dared me. “What the f*ck do you want to come and see me fo?