New Statesman

Andrew Marr: Trump has abandoned Ukraine Listen to the full episode with @andrewmarr9 and @hannahsbee on the New Statesman podcast as soon as it drops 👇 https://lnkd.in/eeZEvQxB

Tom Holland on the long reign of the Caesars: 🔴 Charlemagne and The Sopranos, Trump and I, Claudius – all owe a debt to the imperial biographies of Suetonius. 🔴 Suetonius’s The Lives of the Caesars is invaluable as a source for Europe’s foundational experience of autocracy, and one of the most gripping and readable collections of biographies ever written. 🔴 The Lives of the Caesars are more than merely lives. They are also a part of the common stock of our imaginings: the stuff of our shared fantasies, terrors and dreams. 🔗 link in the comments. 👇

In the age of AI, how do we trust what we see online? Deepfakes and generated images are eroding public trust. 💡 A spotlight podcast with Adobe, featuring Henry Ajder, Stefanie Valdés-Scott & Kanishka Narayan https://lnkd.in/eUSYWNTU

Keir Starmer must rebuild the UK’s enfeebled armed forces, writes Andrew Marr: 🔴 There’s uncertainty on every side. 🔴 Marco Rubio, Donald Trump’s Secretary of State, scheduled to meet Foreign Secretary David Lammy in Munich shortly, is said to be “appalled” by a recent press story suggesting the Treasury was delaying Britain’s increase in military spending 2.5 per cent of GDP by another seven years. 🔴 Treasury people are bracing themselves for difficult conversations with the likes of Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary, and Health Secretary Wes Streeting. “More money for missiles means less money for hospitals and kids,” says an official, bleakly. How do we get a properly equipped army which can do its job in Europe; enough troops; a missile defence; protection for undersea cables; a cyber capability and the rest when there is no money? 🔗 link in the comments. 👇

Agnes Callard on the use of Socrates in modern life: 🔴 “Socrates wants us to reflect on the oddity of our sexual practices” 🔴 “The key to getting unstuck” is to relocate thought “from its usual home inside one person’s head into the shared space of the conversation that passes between two people”. 🔴 “If you think as I think, that you really can’t think by yourself, then whenever anyone asks you a question, that’s an opportunity.” Are you living Socratically? 🔗 link in the comments. 👇

Florida Man has taken over America, writes Lily Lynch. 🔴 Approaching Mar-a-Lago, there is little to suggest you are nearing a nerve centre of global power. 🔴 The Sunshine State, once America’s dead end, has become its new seat of power. 🔴 With each passing day, Donald Trump’s America increasingly resembles Florida. Will the seat of power remain in the south? 🔗 link in the comments. 👇

Last night in Westminster, the New Statesman hosted a lively reception on energy, sustainability and investment, in association with Ørsted UK. Bill Esterson, Labour MP for Sefton Central and chair of the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee, discussed the Warm Homes Plan and the ways in which Labour must equip the workforce to deliver on its energy agenda.

The Great Gatsby has its centenary in 2025. Sarah Churchwell discusses what we get wrong about the book. 🔴 The greatness of F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel lies in its details. But they are often overlooked. 🔴 In our culture’s collective memory, greatly influenced by Hollywood, Gatsby embodies the Roaring Twenties, and everyone wants to join the party. 🔴 Luhrmann’s Broadway is thronged with yellow taxis – but New York taxis were not uniformly yellow in the early 1920s. Is Gatsby the greatest novel ever written? 🔗 link in the comments. 👇

The empty philosophy of BrewDog’s James Watts, by Sarah Manavis. 🔴“Be a selfish bastard” counts among the entrepreneur’s maxims. 🔴 He turned BrewDog into a household name through loud declarations of his company’s employment values. 🔴 While there were always sceptics, there were many more who sincerely bought in to the brand. How far can the company’s top-down messaging go? 🔗 link in the comments. 👇

💡 From the Spotlight Housing supplement: Where does the Budget leave housebuilding? Funding solutions will be needed to complement planning reforms and unlock delivery.