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

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.
Robin Simcox: “Extremism is not always a black-and-white issue”

Apr 24, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

Robin Simcox is the UK’s commissioner for countering extremism. But what does “extremism” mean? It is a “subjective word”, he said when we met near his office in Farringdon, central London. “It means different things to different people. It’s not always a black-and-white issue.”We spoke not long after the government published its new definition of extremism on 14 March. It was widely received with derision, and criticised by three former Conservative home secretaries.
Britain’s worklessness crisis is getting worse

Apr 21, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

Inflation, GDP, net migration, Labour’s poll lead – these are all numbers Westminster politicians obsess over. But one measure above all is causing angst at the heart of the UK government: economic inactivity. It is a dehumanising bit of Whitehallese for a very human phenomenon – those of working age who are neither in nor seeking work. The number of people inactive because of ill health has hit a new record high of 2.8 million.
How Britain legalised crime

Apr 9, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

“Pig Alley” is a corridor of crime running along the backs of houses and garages in the Kent town of Chatham, on the River Medway. It doesn’t have an official name – local police call it Newnham Street, the fire service Henry Street, but everyone knows it as Pig or Piggy Alley. Historically, two abattoirs operated at either end, and residents would spot the occasional escapee piglet. The name has stuck today because police (“pigs”) often turn up here.
John Healey: “Britain has a lot to learn from Ukraine’s resilience”

Apr 3, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

During the last general election campaign, when Labour campaigners were out knocking on doors, Help for Heroes or Royal British Legion stickers in windows were sure signs they wouldn’t get a hearing. By polling day in December 2019, under the leadership of long-time Nato sceptic Jeremy Corbyn, the party had developed a reputation for being soft on defence.
Britain’s bitter asylum stalemate

Mar 20, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

I’ll always remember the first time I glimpsed the inside of an “asylum hotel”. Beyond the Channel-battered dinghies washing up on Kentish shingle, nothing encapsulates Britain’s bitter asylum stalemate better than the 350-odd hotels controversially commandeered by the Home Office across the UK. In June 2023 such hotels housed 50,546 people awaiting asylum decisions.
Bust Britain

Mar 5, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

One recent misty morning in Taunton, the county town of Somerset, I was taken on a tour of our decaying public realm. The flowerbeds, which have won Britain in Bloom contests, will no longer be planted along the neat Victorian promenades of Vivary Park. Funding for the Brewhouse, a modernist theatre of Bourbon-biscuit-coloured brick decorated with a Shakespeare mural, is ending. At a popular café, a server with Down’s syndrome will lose the employment service that supports the job he loves.
The tax-dodger’s worst enemy

Mar 2, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

At a café in the rural expanse around Hunstanton, a sandy seaside town in west Norfolk, the tax lawyer Dan Neidle was making his case. “The duck-fat hash browns here are amazing. I’m getting one. Go on, order one.” I did. He was right. Thankfully for his bank account, Neidle has turned out to be right about quite a lot of things.
Why George Galloway won the Rochdale by-election

Feb 29, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anoosh Chakelian

George Galloway, the veteran left-wing agitator, is returning to Westminster after winning a decisive victory in the Rochdale by-election. The former Labour MP, who stood for his own Workers Party in the seat, won 12,335 votes and a comfortable majority of 5,697 in the once-safe Labour seat – an old textile town in the foothills of the Pennines.