Anoosh Chakelian

London

Podcast Host at The New Statesman Podcast

Britain editor, @NewStatesman. Lead host, @NewStatesman Podcast (Publisher Podcast Award winner '21-24) & co-host Westminster Reimagined with Armando Iannucci.

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Articles

Why is Kemi Badenoch making the grooming gangs about herself?

1 week ago | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

Since Louise Casey published her report into grooming gangs, Kemi Badenoch has been wildly missing the right tone in her response. On Saturday, she sent an email to Conservative Party members complete with a jaunty exclamation mark: “We won! Grooming gang inquiry announced.” Anyone else who has read the details of these rape cases wouldn’t immediately assume there were any “winners” here.
The shame of Labour’s austerity doctrine

2 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

The first thing the Chancellor Rachel Reeves wants you to know is that her spending review is not “austerity”. That was how she opened her statement, it’s how her team has been briefing the plans, and it’s also how almost every chancellor I remember in recent years have framed their budgets.
Jeremy Hunt: A Conservative-Reform coalition is “not going to happen”

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

In an interview on the New Statesman Politics podcast, the former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt dismissed his colleague Robert Jenrick’s idea of bringing “a coalition together” of Conservatives and Reform UK. “It’s not going to happen, because Reform’s avowed mission is to destroy the Conservatives. So even if the Conservatives wanted to, Reform aren’t interested,” said Hunt, who has written a new book about Britain’s influence, Can We Be Great Again?.
Revealed: Labour’s welfare cuts will take people out of work

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

The government’s disability benefit cuts would force people out of work or to reduce their working hours, according to new research by the Money and Mental Health Policy Institute – the charity led by Martin Lewis, the consumer champion. Labour’s plans to tighten assessments for the personal independence payment (PIP) will affect around 800,000 claimants.
Britain’s new-build nightmare

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

As the bohemia of Camden fades, its land value has spiked. The north London borough – once home to Amy Winehouse, Alan Bennett alongside his Lady in the Van and the very last of the Mohican-topped punks – has become a wonderland for property developers. Over the past decade, new-build housing has saturated the postcode like a Beck’s-sodden beer mat. From 2014-15 to 2023-24, 5,634 new builds have been built in Camden, compared with a local authority average of 5,450 in the same period in England.
How the weather changed on the “cruel” two-child benefit cap

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

Labour is in the middle of a slow-motion U-turn on the two-child benefit cap. Our political editor, Andrew Marr, revealed on last week’s episode of the New Statesman podcast that it was Keir Starmer’s “priority” to reverse the George Osborne-era cut to benefits for third-born children, and there have been similar reports over the bank holiday weekend.
The children denied a childhood

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

After a year of maternity leave, my mind is now a map of the best routes to walk around London’s East End. Like the Knowledge, but for prams. My favourite follows the thicketed paths around Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park – the poorest and most overlooked of Victorian London’s “Magnificent Seven” private cemeteries. And not just because the gravel pathways rippling with roots are ideal terrain for jiggling a baby to sleep.
Britain’s aisles of strangers

1 month ago | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

The last Morrisons café is closing its doors. Since April, the supermarket chain has been shutting down its 52 in-store cafés, ending with the Haxby branch in north Yorkshire on 14 May. Seeking a leaner model, the company is instead trialling new “robots” to guide customers through the aisles and check stock levels, pricing and placement. This isn’t just a niche retail story.
Teresa Thornhill interview: “The system keeps some children safe, but fails others”

May 8, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

Chelsea K was a homeless 18-year-old who grew up in and out of foster care. She was pregnant and unsure of the father’s identity; the likeliest candidate was someone known to authorities as a violent and mentally unstable man. She didn’t access antenatal care until eight months into her pregnancy. When asked where she and her baby – known in social services documentation as “Unborn K” – would live, she suggested they would move in with her mother, who had a drinking problem.
From Marilynne Robinson to Ross King: new books reviewed in short

Apr 24, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Pippa Bailey |Michael Prodger |Anoosh Chakelian |Tom Gatti

Reading Genesis by Marilynne RobinsonMarilynne Robinson’s book is exegesis, but it’s not a scholarly study. Rather, it approaches this foundational text – of Judaism, Christianity and much of Western thought – as a work of literature. That is not to say that Robinson, who is Christian, considers it fiction, but that she believes it to be the product of multiple writers, carefully honed and refined over generations.