A first look at this week's magazine.
10 - 16 June issue
A special issue on Britain in Europe
During the referendum campaign, the debate over Britain’s membership of the European Union has been anything but edifying. Sober consideration of our international obligations, a reappraisal of Britain’s place in the world, discussion of important concerns such as the implications of Brexit for the Good Friday Agreement and our border with Ireland – all of these have been too often sidelined in favour of overblown rhetoric about mass migration, scare stories from both sides, and the latest instalment in the Conservative Party’s collective psychodrama. This week’s New Statesman aims to redress that balance, and elevate the tone, by bringing together Nobel laureates, leading international thinkers, statesmen and historians (as well as a few comedians) to explore the multiple dimensions of what Britain’s choice on 23 June will mean.
In recent years, we have published a series of guest-edited issues. Our collaborators have included Rowan Williams (when he was archbishop of Canterbury), Richard Dawkins (who conducted the last ever interview with Christopher Hitchens), Ai Weiwei (then under house arrest in Beijing) and Russell Brand (who can forget the furore that created?). Now, we have asked Gordon Brown to guest-edit a special NS on Britain in Europe because of his history of serious intellectual engagement with constitutional affairs. In his introductory essay, he makes an unashamedly progressive case for our continued membership of the EU and he is joined in our pages by Amartya Sen, Linda Colley, Tim Berners-Lee, Michael Sandel, Enda Kenny, Stephen Hawking, Mark Mazower, Ban Ki-moon and many others.