New Statesman Media Bias

From the NS archive: The capacity of an acre

Politics

18 February 1922: Is the soil of England and Wales being turned to the bestaccount? During the First World War there was a boom in British agriculture. Previously Britain had imported 80 per cent of its grain and 40 per cent of its meat. With trade routes cut off, the government was required to impose new systems and find labour to make Britain self-sufficient. But in the years that followed, land changed hands frequently –many of the 150,000 farmers who were conscripted did not return home –and peacetime trade deals were renegotiated. The Agriculture Act of 1920 supposedly guaranteed farmers’ wages and crop prices,but the Act was repealed a year later and the price of wheat plummeted. And so, in this piece from early 1922, our correspondent SLBconsiders, in a turbulent time for agriculture, the value and potential of a British acre, and how to make the most of the green and pleasant land. *** Nowadays, when the question of the land’s real value is canvassed so frequently and with so small a measure of agreement, it is interesting to turn to figures that stand beyond dispute. Rather more than a year agoDaniel Hall, one of the “three-decker brains” of agriculture, del...
New Statesman Feb 23, 2021

After U-turning in Australia, Facebook faces bigger battles elsewhere

Tech

The social network has won concessions in its fight with the Australian government. But across the world politicians’ frustrations with the company have intensified. Facebook’s fight with the Australian government has followed a familiar course. Struggling to compete with the tech giants in the realm of online advertising, the old media guard successfully lobbied for new legislation mandating that Big Tech reimburses it for the engagement and traffic its journalism generates on their platforms. In response, the tech giants threatened to remove their services from the jurisdiction. In Facebook's case, it followed through on that threat –and now it has blinked. What distinguishes this battle from earlier ones is the speed at which the process played out. When the Spanish government introduced similar legislation in 2014, Google withdrew its Google News service from the country. Nearly seven years passed between that move and the potential U-turn that emerged on Monday 22 February. Facebook, meanwhile, has reversed its position in less than seven days. It’s no surprise that the firm has moved quickly. Facebook’s decision generated a ferocious backlash last week as it became cl...
New Statesman Feb 23, 2021

From the NS archive: Thought control at the BBC

Politics

15 November 1958:Command and bias dog the institution. There is nothing new about the politics of the BBC. In 1958, the colourful Labour MP Tom Driberg examined the appointment of Hugh Carleton Greene (Graham Greene’s brother) as the director of news and current affairs. The newly created position allowed Greene to vet and veto every aspect of the corporation’s output. Driberg was not a fan of such centralised control: not only did it leave creative producers hamstrung, but it could also take on a political aspect, too. When bias was shown, said Driberg, it tended to favour the right, “almost as invariably as an error in a restaurant bill is against the customer”. The BBC, he reckoned, neededless bias and less stuffiness. *** “It was felt that an editorial mind was needed.” These are the significantly impersonal words used by a senior executive of the BBC to explain a major recent change in BBC policy. On 18 August Mr Hugh Carleton Greene took office as director of news and current affairs. This post has no precedent in the history of the BBC. Its holder (with his staff) has, perhaps, more power over the content of the most important BBC programmes than any other singl...
New Statesman Feb 23, 2021

Why it’s not too late for the UK to pursue a zero-Covid strategy

Tech

To take fulladvantage of vaccination, Britain should adopt the elimination strategy successfully followedby New Zealand. A characteristic of those countries dealing effectively with the coronavirus pandemic is that many of them are islands. It is hardly a surprise that the centuries-old practice of quarantine, one of the critical methods for controlling the spread of infectious diseases, is greatly helped by being an island. Places such as Taiwan, New Zealand, Japan, and even Guernsey and the Isle of Man, have all taken advantage of this to eliminate the virus. But it is notable that countries such as Vietnam and Thailand have done so too. [See also:Christopher Snowdon on why the zero-Covid cure could be worse than the disease] These and other countries’ success stand in stark contrast to the appalling death toll and economic destruction that has affected many countries in Europe, particularly the UK. But there are also success stories, including Norway and Finland, which have managed to contain thespread of the virus. The knowledge that deaths from Covid-19 are preventable has spurred a so-called zero-Covid movement across the Continent. While it is known by various n...
New Statesman Feb 23, 2021

How the UK’s Hong Kong visa offer could still fail refugees

Politics

Community groups fear the government is unprepared for one of its biggest immigration challenges since Windrush. The UK has experienced two defining immigration events since the Second World War: the 1948-1971 Windrush eraand the EU’s post-1992 introduction of freedom of movement. A new visa scheme for Hong Kongers with British National Overseas (BNO) status could now pose a third. Following Beijing’s imposition of a punitive national security law on Hong Kong in June last year, the UK government introduced a visa that allows Hong Kongers to live and work in the UK for five years and eventually apply for citizenship. The security law, which the British government believes violates the agreement that transferred the former colony to China in 1997, has already seen Hong Kong’s opposition figures arrested and sweeping new restrictions imposed on school curriculums and the media. As a result, many Hong Kongers no longer feel safe, and the UK Home Office estimates that anywhere between 9,000 and 1,050,000 million could move to Britain within the next five years (with a number between 258,000 and 322,400 being most likely). Yet while the UK’s new visa scheme could have ...
New Statesman Feb 23, 2021

The biggest critics of Boris Johnson's lockdown roadmap are on his own side

Politics

The Prime Minister appears to have struck a sensible balance, but a tricky fight among Conservative supporters lies ahead. Boris Johnson has unveiled his roadmap for easing the lockdown in England –putting the country on course to be free of most restrictions by21 June, assuming that the government's four tests are all met. In practice, as New Statesman writerFreddie Hayward's summary of the debate in the House of Commonscaptures well, the balance of opinion in the Conservative party means it is hard to see how, regardless of what the data may show, England's lockdown won't come to an end on that date. The biggest immediate risk is the imminent return of all schoolchildren on 8 March, including teenagers. The damage that the loss of schooling and socialising has done to many children's wellbeing makes that risk a no-brainer in my view.Yet, that the reopening of schoolsis not accompanied by further action on employers who are unnecessarily urging their employees to return to work, means that it is riskier than it needs to be. Where the government could go further is on activity outdoors. Given everything we know about how the coronavirus actually transmits, limits...
New Statesman Feb 23, 2021

Why England’s inhumane sex ban must now end

Politics

The lack of attention paid to relationshipssuggests a peculiarly Britishunwillingnessto considerhuman sexuality. When Alistair Foot and Anthony Marriott wrote the play No Sex Please, We’re British in 1971, they probably didn’t expect it to become unofficial government policy. And yet, when Boris Johnson yesterday announced his much-hyped roadmap for easing the current lockdown, his statement made clear that getting a manicure or playing outdoor tennis will be legal long before England’s de facto sex ban is revoked. For while the dates and details for the subsequent phases of relaxing the rules remain tentative, the absolute earliest indoor mixing will be permitted is 17 May. The scientific rationale is apparent – Covid-19 is an airborne disease, and transmission risk is much higher inside than out. But keeping the blanket ban on indoor mixing in place for almost another three months overlooks the fact that lockdown rules have made sex for millions of people illegal for most of the past year. While restrictions have come and gone at different times and in different parts of the country, for most of England the window when indoor mixing was allowed was tantalisingly b...
New Statesman Feb 23, 2021

Podcast: Rules of the Roadmap

Politics

Stephen Bush and Anoosh Chakelian examine Boris Johnson's plans to ease lockdown restrictions. Boris Johnson has outlined his four-step planto bring the UK out of lockdown. The Prime Minister announced pupils will return to schools on 8 March, with rules relaxing in phases thereafter. If strict criteria are met, all restrictions on social contact could be lifted by 21 June. On thisepisode of the New Statesmanpodcast, Stephen Bush and Anoosh Chakelian look at the plan and read between the lines of Boris Johnson's choice of language. Then, in You Ask Us, they tackle your questions on the seeming mismatch between the drugs policies of major parties and public positioning on that issue. Listen here You canlisten and subscribeto theNew Statesmanpodcaston all major podcast platforms, includingApple Podcasts,Spotify,Google Podcasts,Stitcher,Acastand more. Send us your questions for future episodes atyouaskus.co.uk. Further reading: Stephen explains why new Covid-19 variants are the greatest threat to Boris Johnson's lockdown roadmap. Martin Fletcher writes thatBoris Johnson must now announce a public inquiry into the UK’s Covid-19 catastrophe. Mar...
New Statesman Feb 23, 2021

Boris Johnson’s biggest lockdown headache is behind him

Politics

Conservative backbenchers are the greatest threat to the Prime Minister’s Covid-19 roadmap. Boris Johnson’s biggest headache as he charts a course out of lockdown? His own backbenchers. The ever-increasing list of Conservative backbench groups are a consistent thorn in the side of government whips with many MPs now used to rebellion. So it seems with the roadmap out of lockdown that the Prime Minister announced in the House of Commons today. Mark Harper, the chair of the Covid Recovery Group, pressed Johnson on why lockdown restrictions will not be lifted once priority groups one to nine have been vaccinated. Harper and more than 60 Conservative MPs have called for all domestic legal restrictions, not including government guidance, to be lifted at the end of April. Though they welcomed the opening of schools on 8 March, the government’s roadmap did not seem to placate their demands for a quicker return to normal. [See also:How the government got duped by the myth of “freedom-loving” Britain] While the government says it is focused on “data not dates”, the roadmap clearly revolves around dates for the earliest lifting of measures and a gap of five weeks between the stages. ...
New Statesman Feb 22, 2021

The meaning of pro-Europeanism – a response to Hans Kundnani

Politics

Civic principles –from liberal democracyto international law–are the cornerstones of the EU, not a particular ethnicity, religion or culture. One of the unexpected by-products of the 2016 Brexit referendum was the birth of an enthusiastic pro-Europeanism, which all of a sudden went from being an abstract, intellectual project to one that captured people’s hearts as well as their heads. Millions took to the streets waving European flags in the UK while opinion polls showed record support for the EU across the Continent. People only understood how much their European identity meant to them when they realised it could be taken away. Hans Kundnani, in his recent essay on pro-Europeanism, does not share this sense of loss. As a British citizen of Dutch and Indian parentage he was never able to think of himself as “European” because, to him, it is a (white) civilisational project. “When my former colleagues at [the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR)] say the EU must become more strategic or ‘sovereign’ or talk about ‘European power’,”he concludes in the essay, “I hearthe analogous idea that, unless Europeans unite and assert themselves, they will be replaced by o...
New Statesman Feb 22, 2021

Brexit weighs heavy on London’s sustainable finance goals

Finance

The UK government has high hopes for London staking its claim as a global centre for green finance but Brexit is pulling in the other direction. In January, Amsterdam took London’s crown as Europe’s largest centre for share trading in the latest post-Brexit blow to the City. Less commented upon was the 8 February decision by the Intercontinental Exchange to shift trading of its carbon emission contracts, which trade an average of €1bn each day, over the North Sea to its Netherlands-based operation. Both developments are a result of the failure of the UK government to secure “equivalence” from the EU for its financial services rules. This makes it much more expensive for London-based firms to offer a whole range of financial services to their EU-based clients – often prohibitively so. Energy Monitor:Why Trump failed to derail the US energy transitionPart of New Statesman Media Group It is unclear how much store the UK government has set in ensuring that the City could retain access to its European markets. Last November, the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, spelledout a vision for Britain’s financial services sector – one rooted in financial technology, openness to listing th...
New Statesman Feb 22, 2021

“Can you imagine if you presented Freud to Jane Austen?”: Josh Cohen on literature and psychoanalysis

Entertainment

The analyst and writer'slatest work,How to Live. What to Do., is a mix of case studies from hisconsulting room, personal reminiscence, andliterary reference points. How should we conceive the relationship between fiction and psychoanalytic thought? What is the largest area of overlap, or the most fruitful point of connection? There’s a boisterous history of literary interpretation with analytic leanings – one thinks of the American scholar Peter Brooks in Reading for the Plot (1984)or Freud himself in his essay “Dostoevsky and Parricide”. The psychology of the literary artist has also been widely explored – by the psychiatrist Anthony Storr in his essays on Kafka and Balzac, for example, or Freud again in “Creative Writers and Day-dreaming.” And it’s often said that the best clinical case studies read like accomplished short stories, with elegant prose, well-timed revelations, and identifying details tweaked. In his wonderful new book How to Live. What to Do., Josh Cohen, a Freudian psychoanalyst who is also a professor of literary theory at Goldsmiths, University of London, goes for a simpler answer – one staring us right in the face. He proceeds from the idea that th...
New Statesman Feb 22, 2021

International coronavirus vaccine tracker: how long will lockdown last?

Tech

Use the New Statesman's trackers to monitor the state of the global effort to vaccinate the world againstCovid-19. A global effort to vaccinate people against Covid-19 is underway - with much of Europe tightening restrictions as a second wave of the virus has taken hold. The New Statesman has launched this page to track the progress of different countries as they seek to protect their populations from the pandemic. It will be updated daily as new data is released. On top of vaccination data, we have gathered statistics on how well testing systems are holding up (the test positivity rate), as well as collecting in one place the number of hospitalisations, cases and deaths for as many countries as we can. Combined, the progress on vaccines and the level of the disease should give an idea of where different countries are heading; are we in for a long period of restrictions, or progressing towards a level of freedom from the virus? International vaccine rates The live map below shows how many doses have been injected for every 100 people in each country. Most vaccination types require two doses to be effective. Using the toggle in the top left, you can change the vi...
New Statesman Feb 22, 2021

Why Boris Johnson must now announce a public inquiry into the UK’s Covid-19 catastrophe

Politics

The success of the vaccine programme should not dull our memories ofthe horrors that preceded it. The “March to Freedom” has begun. Boris Johnson has unveiled a cautious roadmap for lifting England’slockdown over the coming months. But what of that other map – the map that shows the grim route that we have travelled this past year with all its perils and pitfalls, its false starts, detours and U-turns? When will there be a reckoning, an accounting, for the catastrophe that has befallen Britain? This Prime Minister is a past master at avoiding responsibility. Aided by a supine opposition, for example, he managed to push his dismal Brexit deal through parliament, and to implement itwith minimal scrutiny. On several occasions he has acknowledged the need for an independent public inquiry into the government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, but always with the rider that now is not the time. He doubtless hopes that the success of the vaccination programme will dull our memories of the horrors that preceded it, but that cannot be allowed to happen. This is not a partisan point. The UK has less than 1per cent of the world’s population but has suffered nearly five per c...
New Statesman Feb 22, 2021

Why new Covid-19 variants are the biggest threat to Boris Johnson’s lockdown roadmap

Politics

A slower unlockingthan last timemakes sense until everyone in Britain has been offered a vaccine. Boris Johnson will today unveil a slow, month-by-month four-step path out of lockdown in England, and along with it the four tests that the UK government is using to judge the speed and scale of the unlocking. The month-by-month approach makes a lot of sense because it allows the government to gauge what exactly is increasing the viral risk, and shows ministers have learnt some of the lessons of the summer. But given everything we know about how coronavirus spreadsand how much safer it is to be outdoors than indoors, it is hard to defend the slow and draconian pace of outdoor unlocking: which seem to be based on little more than the conviction that the average British person is too daft to understand the basic message that the outdoors is very safe and the indoors is very dangerous. (It doesn’t help, of course, that government messaging on hand-washing and deep cleaning, while good public hygiene, is next to useless as far as the spread of coronavirus is concerned.) Those four tests? That the vaccination programme continues to progress, that vaccines are effective at bringin...
New Statesman Feb 22, 2021

How Africa is being left behind in the Covid-19 vaccine race

Politics

Proposals to addressdisparitiesin global vaccine distribution may not be enough to avoid what one UN official has termed“vaccineapartheid”. The Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC) says it expects to receive its first million doses of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine this week, which will be distributed to some 20 countries around the continent. The first shots will go to healthcare workers, with six million more doses of the vaccine, manufactured by India’s Serum Institute, expected to be delivered in the coming weeks. While this appears to be good news, the arrival of the doses to the Africa CDC highlights just how dire the distribution of vaccines to the world’s second most populous continent is. Africa has so far inoculated around 0.15 per cent of its population of some 1.3 billion, the second-lowest rate of any continent behind Oceania, according to figures collated by Our World In Data, a project at the University of Oxford. India, with a similar population, has vaccinated more than four times as many. The only exception to this trend is the Seychelles, the rich island country off the coast of Somalia, which has administered 60 doses p...
New Statesman Feb 22, 2021

Katy Kirby's Cool Dry Place: soft but subversive folk-pop

Lifestyle

Kirby’s sharp lyrics, layered melodies and complex manipulation of rhythm markher out as an exciting and sophisticated songwriter. The singer-songwriter Katy Kirby was brought up in small-town Texas and learned to sing at church, where, in the mid-1990s, “Christian contemporary music” reigned. She has since detached from her faith, but something so engrained is difficult to leave behind. Her debut record, Cool Dry Place, doesn’t reference these facts directly, but it does expertly conjure a sense of existentialtension. At first, it might seem as though there is nothing tense at all about Kirby’s soft, folky sound, her triple-filtered-mineral-water voice and the record’s muffled, cassette-tape feel. The album opens with hazy strumming on a barely audible acoustic guitarand Kirby’s voice, which begins on an upwards arpeggiothen quickly falls again: “I pray, I pray, for your eyelids.”The track – aptly named “Eyelids”– continues, slowly, quietly, fuzzily, with a bedroom-pop intimacy and the sort of resigned, meandering melodies that soothe the listener into letting out a long sigh. Though Kirby returns to this sad, reflective mood later on the album, what happens next...
New Statesman Feb 19, 2021

World Review Podcast: will democracy be restored in Myanmar?

Politics

Emily Tamkin and Ido Vock are joined by Wai Hnin Pwint Thon to discuss the unrest in Myanmar following the military coup. Large scale protests have been taking place in Myanmar since a military coup on February 1stdeposed the democratically-elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. This week, the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar reported that the military were being deployed to the cityof Yangon, raisingfears of bloodshed. Protesters are calling for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners, but activist groups have raised concerns that even that may not be enough to restore democracy in Myanmar. On this episode of World Review from the New Statesman, Emily Tamkin in Washington DC and Ido Vock in Berlin are joined by Wai Hnin Pwint Thon, an activist for Burma Campaign UK whose father wasone of those arrested in the days following the military coup. They discuss why the military have taken power, what this means for Myanmar, and whether there is a road to true democracy for the country. Listen here: Further reading Francis Wade has also been following the situation in Myanmar, and has written this piece exploring how d...
New Statesman Feb 19, 2021

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New Statesman Most Recent Articles

From the NS archive: The capacity of an acre

After U-turning in Australia, Facebook faces bigger battles elsewhere

From the NS archive: Thought control at the BBC

Why it’s not too late for the UK to pursue a zero-Covid strategy

How the UK’s Hong Kong visa offer could still fail refugees

The biggest critics of Boris Johnson's lockdown roadmap are on his own side

Why England’s inhumane sex ban must now end

Podcast: Rules of the Roadmap

Boris Johnson’s biggest lockdown headache is behind him

The meaning of pro-Europeanism – a response to Hans Kundnani

Brexit weighs heavy on London’s sustainable finance goals

“Can you imagine if you presented Freud to Jane Austen?”: Josh Cohen on literature and psychoanalysis

International coronavirus vaccine tracker: how long will lockdown last?

Why Boris Johnson must now announce a public inquiry into the UK’s Covid-19 catastrophe

Why new Covid-19 variants are the biggest threat to Boris Johnson’s lockdown roadmap

How Africa is being left behind in the Covid-19 vaccine race

Katy Kirby's Cool Dry Place: soft but subversive folk-pop

World Review Podcast: will democracy be restored in Myanmar?