New Statesman

The New Statesman (known from 1931 to 1964 as the New Statesman and Nation) is a British political and cultural news magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney and Beatrice Webb and other leading members of the socialist Fabian Society, such as George Bernard Shaw, who was a founding director. The longest-serving editor was Kingsley Martin (1930–1960), and the most recent editor was Jason Cowley, who assumed the post in 2008 and left in 2024.

Today, the magazine is a print–digital hybrid. According to its present self-description, it has a modern liberal and progressive political position. Jason Cowley, the magazine's former editor, has described the New Statesman as a publication "of the left, for the left" but also as "a political and literary magazine" with "sceptical" politics.

The magazine has recognised and published new writers and critics, as well as encouraging major careers. Its contributors have included John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Virginia Woolf, Christopher Hitchens, and Paul Johnson. Historically, the magazine was jocularly referred to as The Staggers – an example of Oxford "-er" undergraduate slang. The nickname is now used as the title of its rolling politics blog.

Circulation was at its highest in the mid-1960s at 93,000. The magazine encountered substantial difficulties in the following decades as readership fell, but it was growing again by the mid-2010s. In 2020, the certified average circulation was 36,591. Traffic to the magazine's website that year reached a new high with 27 million page views and four million distinct users. Associated websites have included CityMetric (now defunct), Spotlight and NewStatesman Tech. In 2018, New Statesman America was launched.

The New Statesman was founded in 1913 by Sidney and Beatrice Webb with the support of George Bernard Shaw and other prominent members of the Fabian Society. The Fabians previously had supported The New Age but that journal by 1912 had moved away from supporting Fabian politics and issues such as women's suffrage. The first editor of the New Statesman was Clifford Sharp, who remained editor until 1928. Desmond MacCarthy joined the paper in 1913 and became literary editor, recruiting Cyril Connolly to the staff in 1928. J. C. Squire edited the magazine when Sharp was on wartime duties during the First World War.

In November 1914, three months after the beginning of the war, the New Statesman published a lengthy anti-war supplement by Shaw, "Common Sense About The War", a scathing dissection of its causes, which castigated all nations involved but particularly savaged the British. It sold a phenomenal 75,000 copies by the end of the year and created an international sensation. The New York Times reprinted it as America began its lengthy debate on entering what was then called "the European War".

During Sharp's last two years in the post, from around 1926, he was debilitated by chronic alcoholism and the paper was actually edited by his deputy Charles Mostyn Lloyd. Although the Webbs and most Fabians were closely associated with the Labour Party, Sharp was drawn increasingly to the Asquith Liberals.

Lloyd stood in after Sharp's departure until the appointment of Kingsley Martin as editor in 1930 – a position that Martin was to hold for 30 years.