“Socialism tends to be statist and this stifles open debate”. Therefore it reduces diversity of opinion which threatens the supremacy of the state or more importantly those who work for it. If so many people depend upon the state for an income, will they ever argue the case for reducing the powers of the state, the numbers of those who work for it and their salary? Not all people who work for the state work for the common good, some do so because it is an easy and well paid life. Will the “New Statesman ” ever criticise those employees of the State who are not up to the job ? Surely it was the inability of the left win middle classes to fail to see and act over the failures of the state which helped to enable the Conservatives to govern for 18 years? It was Callaghan, someone who never went to university pointed out the failings in the state education system, not the left wing middle classes.

A major criticism of the Conservatives is surely their inability to recognise the weaknesses in the financial system which funds much of their party and provides employments for it’s members . Until the New Statesman can be honest with the failings of the state and it’s employees, it will never attain the intellectual heights it could achieve if it was more detached.

Free is just another word for socialism – in my opinion that is.

Why should it stifle debate? Surely if you are to be some form of co-operative you would have to debate to get across the argument and therefore look to the way forward?

If, which is highly unlikely, everyone was to become a pool of workers just employed by the state then that would mean that each and everyone would be looking not to increase their personal wealth but that of everyone else as well – because in turn that would mean your wealth would increase – self fulfilling really.

If you mean ‘socialism’ of the days of CCCP? Then that wasn’t socialism – it was totalitarianism akin to a fascist state.

If the NS needs a way forward it does need a broader appeal – and that appeal is inbuilt if they should look for it in the very people who are not narrowed down to the Telegraph, Guardian, Sun or Mirror. The Mail doesn’t come into it as that is Fox News in print.

I saw Robin Cook in Kings’ Cross station, a few weeks before he died, waiting for his Friday lunchtime train to Edinburgh. He went into Smiths and came out with the New Statesman and I thought “So that’s the kind of person who buys the NS!”. I know very few people who read it. I read it occasionally in 2003 and 2004 (when it had some good articles about the invasion of Iraq) but I began to find it irritating and stopped reading it. I can imagine someone like Robin Cook reading it, Labour Party and intellectual. But the problem is that Robin Cook is dead and I don’t think that there are many people like him left. I cannot imaging Campbell reading it, which is one of the things I find odd about asking him to edit an edition. And people outside the Labour Party seem to find irritating its Labour Party focus.

A hard left turn is what the New Statesman needs. That and some interesting writers.

“some interesting writers” is the key point. And less comment. I don’t pay for what I can get for free.

I’ve only ever bought the New Statesman once (the Campbell guest edition, which was largely disappointing but worth the price for the interview with Alex Ferguson and the article on where newspaper editors send their kids to schol), but you’d have thought I’d be part of its target audience. Alistair Campbell and Anthony Barnett are both wrong: the New Statesman’s circulation can’t be revived by making it more loyal to or more independent of Labour.

What would make me buy it? Content I can’t get on the web, and that doesn’t go out of date quickly. That means seeking out people who might not write stuff on the web of their own accord and paying them for articles about their own lives and struggles. No national newspaper did a full transcript of a sit-down interview with any of the strikers at Lindsey Oil Refinery. Surely that kind of thing can’t be so difficult to manage? Coverage of places and situations that amateurs writing for free can’t afford to cover (expensive, but that’s the point, and that’s what’d make me buy it).

And NO sodding comment, (especially fucking PROCESS STORIES GAHHHHHHHH), which seems to be virtually all that’s in these magazines.

Just read the article again and my mind is boggling at its daftness. I’m not going to buy magazines because they have the correct anti-war line. I’m going to buy them because they’re interesting, informative & provide me with something I can’t get elsewhere.

[3] You’ve missed the point of that story, Guano – even then, the NS couldn’t persuade one of the more intelligent Labour Cabinet ministers to take out a subscription.

The dear old Staggers should migrate on-line and become the British HuffPo. as Anthony Barnett says, it should promote democracy and the public service ethos. More particularly, it should resource itself to have stringers (i) watching city and county halls not only for sleaze but also examples of good practice and (ii) reporting local-based citizens’ initiatives.

I might usefully have added that, as far as magazines go, the London Review of Books has occupied much of the traditional Staggers territory. And yes, I do have a subscription to it.

I agree about the LRB.

I’m not going to buy magazines because they have the correct anti-war line. I’m going to buy them because they’re interesting, informative & provide me with something I can’t get elsewhere.

tim – I think the point isn’t what line it takes on the war… but I would hazard a guess that Anthony means that its willingness to cosy up to Alastair Campbell, despite the war and all the mistakes he’s led New Labour into… it’s a symptom of the problem rather than the cause.

the NS couldn’t persuade one of the more intelligent Labour Cabinet ministers to take out a subscription.

Actually Robin Cook was a subscriber but his copy was sent to Scotland.