Newsletters Editor at the New Statesman. Peaceable Land out on fortnightly Sundays.
London
Joined March 2025
- Tweets838
- Following351
- Followers920
- Likes698
George Monaghan retweeted
OPEN LETTER: Sally Rooney is a writer, not a terrorist. Her books must be available to the public. Their withdrawal from sale, on the basis of ill-conceived and draconian anti terror legislation, is an affront to basic principles of free speech and expression so long taken for granted in this country. We categorically reject censorship - whether direct or indirect - and urge the government to change course, amending the legislation which has led us to this point of repressive absurdity.
For this reader at least, soaring emotional passages like this are just what you pick up a magazine hoping to find
And I wrote about it here:
newstatesman.com/this-englan…
Really enjoyed all of this @spectator podcast with @ClarkeMicah and @aroberts_andrew — and then my cathedral tours are mentioned! So happy!
This is so fantastic and atmospheric and stimulating! A perfect read to start the day!
THE SUSPICIOUS RELATIONSHIP by @freddiejh8
Ask what people in Washington DC think about Burnham and it soon becomes clear that he does not make them think at all. A scoff, a shrug, a quizzical raise of the eyebrow, a look of bored pity: these are the common responses when the Prime Minister is mentioned. “He’s new, and the last one was new, and the one before that was new, and the one before that was new,” a White House official told me. “The thinking is: all right, well, on the current trend, he’ll probably be gone next year, too.”
The high turnover of UK leaders has only added to the idea that Britain has little to contribute – it simply does not have the cash, warships or AI firms to matter much to those in Washington looking at their global chessboard. “Burnham has the weight of the governor of South Dakota,” is how a Maga official put it to me.
Underneath all this is an emotional critique – that successive British governments have been poor custodians of America’s ancestral homeland. The concern is genuine among Maga figures and the tone is proprietorial, as if it were their responsibility to correct what the British elite has got so wrong. The millions of immigrants who have entered Britain over the past decade make the American right shake its head in disappointment. “You go to the UK, and it is not the UK of ten years ago or 20 years ago,” one official lamented.
Earlier this year, a senior administration official was listening to a British counterpart complain about the rise of the radical right in the UK. The Brit blamed disinformation. The American suggested that they take the public on tours of Birmingham and Blackburn to show that the disinformation was wrong and, in fact, those places were ethnically the same as they were in the 1950s. Some in the administration think there is little chance that Britain can recover under Burnham. “You’re an ally. Sort your stuff out, and we’ll get back to you when you have done that,” one White House official said.
Many in the US government hope that Nigel Farage takes Downing Street at the next election. He is seen within Maga as Britain’s best, and probably last, chance. While some on the online right think that Rupert Lowe’s ethno-nationalism is closer to what is needed – Lowe was recently on Joe Rogan’s popular podcast and his posts on X are pushed by Elon Musk – this is not yet a widespread view in the administration. “I see him as a slop purveyor,” one official said. Maga figures are still concerned that Reform lacks a professional operation but, by comparison, they think that Lowe’s Restore is little more than a social media party.
One figure remarked to me that Farage is increasingly thought of as a man standing in a DC bar waiting for someone to recognise him. But he is still seen as being on the same side as Maga. The US government is increasingly protective of right-wingers in Europe who they think are being persecuted by the liberal establishment. It was noted in Washington that when announcing a new centre to counter Russian disinformation in his UN speech, Burnham said he wanted to counter “far-right narratives”. Those narratives are often identical to the administration’s own policy.
Cover art by Cracked Hat
George Monaghan retweeted
Never skip a Monaghan interview!
My interview with @JoyceCarolOates, which was an honour and a joy to do, and which I hope does some justice.
Joyce Carol Oates contradicts herself:
George Monaghan retweeted
Read @GMonaghan1998’s latest, a golden boy on a golden girl:
There is something hard to know about Joyce Carol Oates, both because she has said so much and because she says so little. She much sooner asks about your life, family and reading than muses on her own life. When some of her letters were published by her biographer Greg Johnson, she couldn’t read them. “Would you like to read something written by yourself when you were much younger? I think you’d probably be cringing! It’s the sort of thing that is ephemeral – like who cares?”
About her past words, too, there is reticence. She once said a fine fate for writers is dying “with one’s romantic fantasies intact”: what were hers? “I don’t know that I really had any.” But didn’t she say her first stories differed from Hemingway’s because they were “much more romantic”? “I never was writing romance in my fiction.” What about the end of Finnegans Wake, that she reads to her students for its “glorious”, “heartbreaking”, “almost overwhelmingly beautiful emotion” as a character grows old and changes from her husband – has she ever felt like that? “I don’t know how to answer that. That’s a mythic character, not really a specific character.”
@GMonaghan1998: Joyce Carol Oates contradicts herself
newstatesman.com/the-weekend…
My interview with @JoyceCarolOates, which was an honour and a joy to do, and which I hope does some justice.
Joyce Carol Oates contradicts herself:
There is something hard to know about Joyce Carol Oates, both because she has said so much and because she says so little. She much sooner asks about your life, family and reading than muses on her own life. When some of her letters were published by her biographer Greg Johnson, she couldn’t read them. “Would you like to read something written by yourself when you were much younger? I think you’d probably be cringing! It’s the sort of thing that is ephemeral – like who cares?”
About her past words, too, there is reticence. She once said a fine fate for writers is dying “with one’s romantic fantasies intact”: what were hers? “I don’t know that I really had any.” But didn’t she say her first stories differed from Hemingway’s because they were “much more romantic”? “I never was writing romance in my fiction.” What about the end of Finnegans Wake, that she reads to her students for its “glorious”, “heartbreaking”, “almost overwhelmingly beautiful emotion” as a character grows old and changes from her husband – has she ever felt like that? “I don’t know how to answer that. That’s a mythic character, not really a specific character.”
@GMonaghan1998: Joyce Carol Oates contradicts herself
newstatesman.com/the-weekend…
George Monaghan retweeted
On “the revolution”, “the duel” between Charles Spencer and the Royal Family, and how King Charles lost his virginity
If the events around the death of Princess Diana were “the revolution”, perhaps courtiers will come to call recent days “the duel”. Like the revolution, it has been bloodless. First came the tabloid briefings. (“HIS WORDS WERE MONSTROUS” screamed the Daily Mail on 19 September, which reported the King had said of his ex-wife, “We’ll forget her soon enough.”) Then came the BBC sit-down on 20 September: Charles Spencer, quarter-zipped and looking suspiciously like Tim Nice-but-Dim, repeating allegations that the then Prince Charles was “giddily elated” by Diana’s death and “went nuts” over her funeral arrangements. From 22 September, the hardback Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, cluttered the shelves of TG Jones. And the book takes an axe to the forgotten and even fallen branches of the family tree. Do we care that Sarah Ferguson’s father was “asked to leave Eton on academic grounds at a time when that was a very rare call indeed”? (Piers Morgan has since announced plans to take legal action against Spencer because of other allegations in the book, factual errors for which Spencer has apologised.)
@nickpaulharris: Charles Spencer is part of the revolution against the royals newstatesman.com/politics/so…
George Monaghan retweeted
A SENSE OF POWER by @TomMcTague
“It is hard to describe, coming into this job when I did and when things were happening,” Andy Burnham explains, “so it’s obviously been hard.” And yet, he believes his father’s death has reaffirmed his priorities. “I’ve also been finding a sense of power in it,” he tells me. “I can hear him and I know his quiet insistence on the things I should do. I’ll be drawing on that when I speak in Liverpool.” The voice Burnham hears is the voice of a traditional Labour man, old-school in some senses, progressive in others, but always resolute and clear-eyed about his beliefs.
Burnham tells me the quiet voice he can hear from his father is both moral and political. He was a lifelong advocate of proportional representation, an important part of his son’s conversion. He also “didn’t put a foot wrong” personally, Burnham says. “He treated people just wonderfully – he barely ever fell out with anybody,” as he puts it. “You asked what I took from him. I’ve tried to treat people like that myself, always.”
If there was a “quiet insistence” in the father, it is fair to say there is something similar in the son: an insistence about the things he wants to do and his own ability to do them. “If you can say, ‘I know why I’m doing it and I can see the difference that I’m making,’ then it all comes together and you can rationalise it,” Burnham explains, contemplating the challenge of power ahead of him.
So why is he doing it? “It is back to… rewiring the country,” he says. “Life for people in large parts of the country just isn’t good enough, and they don’t have enough power to change things.”
I push him on why he thinks only he can fix it and not someone else. “Oh, I don’t want to be arrogant,” he says, again, almost apologetically, hiding the steel of his conviction. He has been beating this drum for years, he says. He saw the injustice of the Hillsborough disaster and then in government was given the chance to change things. He tried to speak for the north in Westminster for 16 years but found he was “shouting into the wind” until he moved back home.
It sounds as though he believes there was a destiny to his journey. “I’m a believer that you get better at things through life if you do learn from things that happen, because they happen for a reason,” he replies, carefully. “So, you know, I do think things happen for a reason: the question is, what do you then do with that situation and how do you process it?” Does he believe in fate, then? “Fate is a bit of a mystical thing to believe in, and all that, so I’m not sure I quite believe in that, but I am a believer in that, you know, you learn and you change.” His mind is drawn to the weeks ahead: speaking to the Labour Party Conference for the first time as leader – back home, in the area he was born and shaped, where his family still live and where his father died. “The one thing I would want to sort of say is… how Liverpool will be a big thing, going to Liverpool for conference. When you talk about fate and all of that, that does feel a bit, you know, major in my life.”
Burnham believes his speech to the conference is the moment he will define the purpose of his premiership in ways that will leave no one in doubt of his intent. “It’s a moment to weave all of these threads together and to lay out the path, I think, and say, ‘Look, Britain’s here, we can be there’ – a much better place – ‘but we’re going to have to be honest with ourselves about what it takes to get from where we are right now to where we should be.’” Being honest with the country: this is the bar the Prime Minister has set for himself. “This has to be a point where the country says, ‘Right, we can’t carry on like this, we need to set a new, clear direction, a new clear path.’”
Cover art by Craig Fleming
These long profiles of political power are so interesting - loved this!
A SENSE OF POWER by @TomMcTague
“It is hard to describe, coming into this job when I did and when things were happening,” Andy Burnham explains, “so it’s obviously been hard.” And yet, he believes his father’s death has reaffirmed his priorities. “I’ve also been finding a sense of power in it,” he tells me. “I can hear him and I know his quiet insistence on the things I should do. I’ll be drawing on that when I speak in Liverpool.” The voice Burnham hears is the voice of a traditional Labour man, old-school in some senses, progressive in others, but always resolute and clear-eyed about his beliefs.
Burnham tells me the quiet voice he can hear from his father is both moral and political. He was a lifelong advocate of proportional representation, an important part of his son’s conversion. He also “didn’t put a foot wrong” personally, Burnham says. “He treated people just wonderfully – he barely ever fell out with anybody,” as he puts it. “You asked what I took from him. I’ve tried to treat people like that myself, always.”
If there was a “quiet insistence” in the father, it is fair to say there is something similar in the son: an insistence about the things he wants to do and his own ability to do them. “If you can say, ‘I know why I’m doing it and I can see the difference that I’m making,’ then it all comes together and you can rationalise it,” Burnham explains, contemplating the challenge of power ahead of him.
So why is he doing it? “It is back to… rewiring the country,” he says. “Life for people in large parts of the country just isn’t good enough, and they don’t have enough power to change things.”
I push him on why he thinks only he can fix it and not someone else. “Oh, I don’t want to be arrogant,” he says, again, almost apologetically, hiding the steel of his conviction. He has been beating this drum for years, he says. He saw the injustice of the Hillsborough disaster and then in government was given the chance to change things. He tried to speak for the north in Westminster for 16 years but found he was “shouting into the wind” until he moved back home.
It sounds as though he believes there was a destiny to his journey. “I’m a believer that you get better at things through life if you do learn from things that happen, because they happen for a reason,” he replies, carefully. “So, you know, I do think things happen for a reason: the question is, what do you then do with that situation and how do you process it?” Does he believe in fate, then? “Fate is a bit of a mystical thing to believe in, and all that, so I’m not sure I quite believe in that, but I am a believer in that, you know, you learn and you change.” His mind is drawn to the weeks ahead: speaking to the Labour Party Conference for the first time as leader – back home, in the area he was born and shaped, where his family still live and where his father died. “The one thing I would want to sort of say is… how Liverpool will be a big thing, going to Liverpool for conference. When you talk about fate and all of that, that does feel a bit, you know, major in my life.”
Burnham believes his speech to the conference is the moment he will define the purpose of his premiership in ways that will leave no one in doubt of his intent. “It’s a moment to weave all of these threads together and to lay out the path, I think, and say, ‘Look, Britain’s here, we can be there’ – a much better place – ‘but we’re going to have to be honest with ourselves about what it takes to get from where we are right now to where we should be.’” Being honest with the country: this is the bar the Prime Minister has set for himself. “This has to be a point where the country says, ‘Right, we can’t carry on like this, we need to set a new, clear direction, a new clear path.’”
Cover art by Craig Fleming
Such a fun read on such a sudden and interesting new fame!
Fin Taylor is not wearing shoes. We are sitting in his South London studio, and his feet are up, his hands are behind his head, he sounds weary. The cumulative effect is as though I am talking to a hungover fresher, who just happens to be about 6’4” and 36 years old.
If you have not heard of him, ask the first 23-year-old boy you can find, and then prepare to hear him splutter, fawn, idolise, venerate. Taylor is the star of the satirical history podcast Fin vs History. One Gen-Z colleague of mine says that hardly a single conversation with his friends goes by without mention of the show. It is currently number 12 in the national podcast charts on Spotify, just behind the Rest is Football and the Newsagents.
@finn_mcredmond: Fin vs history vs sincerity newstatesman.com/culture/rad…
George Monaghan retweeted
RUPERT LOWE CONFRONTS, DISSECTS AND DESTROYS
Since his election to Public Accounts (achieved with the curious support of Conservative Party MPs last October), Lowe has become a rare social media crossover event for the committee. “Rupert Lowe DISSECTS civil servant over FAILED plans to drive economic growth”; “Rupert Lowe CONFRONTS ‘WOKE’ NHS boss for hiring ‘foreign doctors’”; “Rupert Lowe UNLEASHES on ‘UNFIT’ civil servant: ‘I WANT YOU FIRED!’” – these are just three of the highest-viewed YouTube adaptations from the otherwise humdrum activities of the committee, once only observed by hare-eyed clerks and Hansard reporters. Lowe’s exploitation of the committee’s camera set-up is a useful reminder of just how right-wing parts of the English public are – loathing state overreach, civil servants and public waste with a fervour you’d normally expect to find in rural New Hampshire.
Read @nickpaulharris on the new political style of Rupert Lowe: newstatesman.com/politics/th…
George Monaghan retweeted
I watched Rupert Lowe's face for two hours
RUPERT LOWE CONFRONTS, DISSECTS AND DESTROYS
Since his election to Public Accounts (achieved with the curious support of Conservative Party MPs last October), Lowe has become a rare social media crossover event for the committee. “Rupert Lowe DISSECTS civil servant over FAILED plans to drive economic growth”; “Rupert Lowe CONFRONTS ‘WOKE’ NHS boss for hiring ‘foreign doctors’”; “Rupert Lowe UNLEASHES on ‘UNFIT’ civil servant: ‘I WANT YOU FIRED!’” – these are just three of the highest-viewed YouTube adaptations from the otherwise humdrum activities of the committee, once only observed by hare-eyed clerks and Hansard reporters. Lowe’s exploitation of the committee’s camera set-up is a useful reminder of just how right-wing parts of the English public are – loathing state overreach, civil servants and public waste with a fervour you’d normally expect to find in rural New Hampshire.
Read @nickpaulharris on the new political style of Rupert Lowe: newstatesman.com/politics/th…