That a 690-page treatise on inequality has become an international bestseller is surely a symptom of our anxieties and of a yearning for something better. The response of some Labour MPs to Javid’s promotion was idiotic. Whatever the outcome in September, Scotland won't have to wait too long for even greater autonomy. Looking forward to the Scottish First Minister's NS lecture on 4 March, wondering what's gone wrong the BBC's arts programming, and remembering Stuart Hall. Why is the left silent on the public school question? As someone who was born in the 1960s, the son of wartime evacuees from London, I had a sense from an early age that Britain was oppressed by a lost greatness. In 2000, on a visit to Zimbabwe, Jason Cowley met the former Rhodesian leader Ian Smith. Robert Greenwald's documentary "Unmanned: America's Drone Wars" is a work of ruthless propaganda - in the best sense. Meanwhile the purpose of Lord Ashcroft's planned biography is much less clear. We're swamped by a tide of reaction and instant opinion churned out by the second on Twitter, writes Jason Cowley. But as Franzen, Obama and Miliband show, instant gratification won't secure our grasp of events. Jason Cowley reviews the current line up on the Test Match Special, remembers a discussion on the greatest essayists with George Plimpton, and speaks at the famously right-wing Peterhouse College in Cambridge. The Conservative Party has never recovered from what it did to Margaret Thatcher and from the legacy of bitterness that resulted. Jason Cowley recalls his first lunch with Peter Wilby, a warning from Tony Howard and champagne with Norman Mackenzie . . . who describes how dreadful Dick Crossman was, and how great Kingsley Martin. The New Statesman was at the forefront of anti-Thatcher campaigning. But in common with much of the left, it never properly understood the forces she unleashed. Divisive arguments and musical nostalgia. The Labour leader believes he can reform capitalism but has yet to find a language that will fire the voter. An independent Scotland would be viable but why break up Britain? In Edinburgh, Alex Salmond walks with the swagger of a man who feels that these could be the last days of the Union. Peel is best known as the creator of the modern police force; but I most admire him for his struggle to repeal the protectionist Corn Laws. Jason Cowley on the fallout from the Archbishop of Canterbury's guest edit of the New Statesman. Miliband is torn between what he would like to do and what the conservatism of the wider political culture will allow him to do.

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