Category Politics books

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Between the Waves by Tom McTague review – the long view on Brexit

An ambitious history of Britain’s volatile relationship with Europe, culminating in the 2016 referendum

Next year marks a decade since Britain voted to leave the EU. A whole 10 years of turmoil, and still the country can’t seem to agree exactly why it happened or what should happen next, with both leavers and remainers increasingly united in frustration about what the referendum has delivered. How did we end up here?

In Between the Waves, New Statesman editor Tom McTague makes an ambitious attempt to answer that question by zooming out and putting Brexit in its broader historical context. The result is a great big entertaining sweep of a book, tracing the roots of Britain’s ambiguous relationship with its neighbours back to the end of the second world war, and will be joyfully inhaled by any reader who loves the kind of podcasts that invariably feature two men talking to each other. It charts the path from a time when membership was seen as an antidote to British decline – the chance for “a nation that lost an empire to gain a continent”, as the Sun put it in 1975 – to a time when it was singled out as the cause of it.

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‘Literature can be a form of resistance’: Lea Ypi talks to Elif Shafak about writing in the age of demagogues

The Albanian author of Free and Turkish novelist discuss the rise of populism, censorship – and how today’s conflicts all come from the unresolved trauma of the past

Lea Ypi’s prize-winning memoir, Free, detailed the experience of growing up in Albania both before and after communist rule. Her new book, Indignity, reconstructs the life of her grandmother, who arrived in Tirana from Salonica as a young woman and became closely involved with the country’s political life. She currently holds the Ralph Miliband chair in politics and philosophy at the London School of Economics. The Turkish writer Elif Shafak is author of more than 20 books, both nonfiction and fiction, including the Booker-shortlisted novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World and, most recently, There Are Rivers in the Sky. When the pair talked over videocall, Ypi travelling in India and Shafak at home in London, their conversation ranged over the threats of censorship and the rise of populism, the challenges of being writers with multiple identities and the importance of representing complex historical events in their work.

Elif Shafak It’s the age of angst. There’s so much anxiety, east and west, young and old, so many people are anxious right now, it’s quite palpable. And I think in many ways, it’s the golden era for demagoguery, for the populist demagogue to enter the stage and say: “Just leave it with me. I’m going to make things simple for you.”

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Frankly by Nicola Sturgeon review – the ex-first minister opens up

Scotland’s former leader addresses conflict with Salmond and rumours of a lesbian affair, but stops short of full disclosure

When the title of Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir, Frankly, was first announced, I had my doubts. Partly, of course, it was a touching nod to her late friend, the comic Janey Godley. Godley’s viral Twitter voiceovers of the first minister of Scotland’s press conferences always ended with the catchphrase: “Frank, get the door!”

As a reporter covering her decade in power, however, I’d always found her to be a master of the lengthy, lawyerly obfuscation and the disarming but consequence-free apology. Would she really engage with the questions that overshadowed the final years of her leadership until her shock resignation in 2023? Questions about Alex Salmond’s sexual harassment investigation, the Scottish government’s secrecy during the pandemic, the toxic legacy of her gender recognition reforms, the stalled delivery of some of her flagship policy pledges, not to mention independence itself. And what about that rumoured lesbian affair?

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King of Kings by Scott Anderson review – how the last shah of Iran sealed his own fate

A clear-eyed account of a difficult, complex man and his self-inflicted fall from grace

The last shah of Iran was a figure from Shakespearean tragedy: outwardly haughty and magnificent, inwardly insecure and indecisive, a Persian Richard II, self-regarding even in his own downfall. When he stood at the foot of his aircraft steps as he left Iran for the last time in January 1979, tears streaming down his cheeks and killer cancer working away inside him, surely even the stoniest heart must have felt some pity for this fallen autocrat?

Not so. The stony heart of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini contained only rage and a desire for vengeance towards the King of Kings (the Iranian monarch’s official designation). “This man has no place in Iran, and no place on Earth,” Khomeini told me in a chilling television interview before leaving Paris for Tehran. On the plane bringing him back from a 15-year exile a few days later to overthrow the shah’s regime, Khomeini muttered that he felt nothing – hichi – on returning home.

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The big idea: should we give babies the right to vote?

Strange as it may seem, it’s hard to refute the arguments for truly universal suffrage

Two years ago, Alisa Perales sued California and the US government because they wouldn’t let her vote. The academically gifted Perales, who was eight years old at the time, argued that the rule excluding under-18s from democracy, which is enshrined in the US constitution, amounted to age discrimination.

Her case was thrown out, but it wasn’t the first time the voting age was challenged and it won’t be the last. The issue of whether the limit should be removed entirely has been raised periodically since at least the 19th century, and the ageless voting movement has been gaining momentum since political philosopher John Wall wrote a manifesto for it in 2021. More recently, children’s author and education researcher Clémentine Beauvais published a short tract in her native France making the case for it.

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