Anthony Barnett

Aug 30, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anthony Barnett

As William Morgan was being arrested in Liverpool during the riots this August, he can be heard on a police bodycam exclaiming “I’m English, I’m English”. It has the force of outrage, as if it meant they were handcuffing the wrong person – but also of self-justification. He got sentenced to two years and eight months after pleading guilty to violent disorder and possessing an offensive weapon. Morgan was far from alone among the rioters in proclaiming his Englishness.

Jul 24, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anthony Barnett

Stuart Weir, the New Statesman’s editor from 1987 to 1991, died peacefully in his sleep on 2 July 2024, after a series of strokes. He was 85. Mischievous is the word that comes immediately to mind about Stuart. A roguish sense of humour, a delight in being contrarian, a gleeful opposition to authority when he could expose its misdeeds.

Apr 26, 2024 | newstatesman.com | Anthony Barnett

A politician, a moralist, a professor and a deeply original historian, David Marquand, who was born in 1934 and died on 23 April, was arguably the most important thinker, polemicist, and theorist of the democratic left in Britain during a crucial period between Margaret Thatcher’s election victory in 1987 and David Cameron’s in 2015. At the end of the 1980s , when the journal Marxism Today headed towards extinction, Marquand published The Unprincipled Society (1988).

Nov 14, 2023 | www-tmp.thenational.scot | Anthony Barnett

THE war over Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are only the most violent of today’s world-shaping ­conflicts. US-China rivalry over Taiwan, Iranian defiance, Brazil’s “active non-alignment”, Brexit ­xenophobia … as the list of aggressive postures grows there is one grim sliver of intellectual satisfaction: Tom Nairn was right.

Nov 14, 2023 | thenational.scot | Anthony Barnett

THE war over Gaza and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are only the most violent of today’s world-shaping ­conflicts. US-China rivalry over Taiwan, Iranian defiance, Brazil’s “active non-alignment”, Brexit ­xenophobia … as the list of aggressive postures grows there is one grim sliver of intellectual satisfaction: Tom Nairn was right.