New Statesman

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Founders: Sidney Webb, Beatrice Webb

Constitutes: Gatekeeper, Magazine

The New Statesman is a British political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was connected then with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, such as George Bernard Shaw, who was a founding director. In 2024, Sohrab Ahmari wrote in it that we should be "grateful for the Deep State".

Today, the magazine is a print-digital hybrid. According to its present self-description, it has a liberal and progressive political position. Jason Cowley, the magazine's editor, has described the New Statesman as a publication "of the left, for the left" but also as "a political and literary magazine" with "sceptical" politics.

Left wing alibi

The magazine is using this "sceptic" image to offer "left-wing" alibi for positions preferred by the establishment. The trend seems to be more noticeable after Jason Cowley took over as magazine's editor in 2008.

• In March 2009 the magazine had its first guest editor, Alastair Campbell, the former head of communications for Tony Blair. Campbell chose to feature his partner Fiona Millar, Tony Blair (in an article "Why we must all do God"), football manager Alex Ferguson, and Sarah Brown, the wife of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. This editorship was condemned by Suzanne Moore, a contributor to the magazine for twenty years. She wrote "New Statesman fiercely opposed the Iraq War and yet now hands over the reins to someone key in orchestrating that conflict"

• It aligned with the campaign against Labour-leader Jeremy Corbyn, and for the first time in the magazine's history explicitly chose not to endorse Labour, writing "but the essential judgement that must be made is on Mr Corbyn himself. His reluctance to apologise for the anti-Semitism in Labour and to take a stance on Brexit, the biggest issue facing the country, make him unfit to be prime minister."

• It also functions as a part of a self-referencing network in foreign policy, to give credibility to select causes. In October 2012 the magazine was guest-edited by Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei, a person much feted by US deep state think-tanks (NED,Freedom House etc) as part of their foreign policy strategy. As part of the strategy to create publicity around this, "for the first time, published simultaneously in Mandarin (in digital form) and English. To evade China's internet censors, the New Statesman uploaded the issue to file-sharing sites such as BitTorrent". As well as writing that week's editorial, Ai Weiwei interviewed the Chinese civil rights activist Chen Guangcheng (simlar story, he received money from the British government), who fled to the United States embassy "after exposing the use of compulsory abortions and sterilisations." The issue was launched on 19 October 2012 at the Lisson Gallery in London, where speakers including artist Anish Kapoor and lawyer Mark Stephens paid tribute to Ai Weiwei.