Fiona Hill, former presidential advisor, joins Megan Gibson.

Martin Lewis ambushed Kemi Badenoch, Your Party think bureaucracy will stop nuclear war, and the Sea Bass handling committee have released exciting new guidance.

Anoosh Chakelian and Will Dunn round up the week's political news you might have missed.

READ: Abandon all hope at the Your Party hustings

In 2014, Helen Macdonald published H is for Hawk - a book that arrived, at least on the surface, as a memoir about grief: the death of their father, and Macdonald's decision to train and live with a goshawk in the aftermath.

It was nature writing, literary biography, cultural history, and a deeply personal account of what happens when someone steps sideways out of ordinary life and into something more feral. Readers found their own stories in it about parenthood, identity, politics, and the uneasy relationship between the human world and the wild.

More than a decade on, that story has taken another form.

You can read more from Helen Macdonald here

Does the Greens' decisive victory in Gorton & Denton spell the end of Keir Starmer's Labour?

After the worst possible outcome for Labour in the Gorton & Denton by-election, Ailbhe Rea joins Tom McTague on Daily Politics from the New Statesman.

They discuss what this means for Keir Starmer, for the Labour party - and for the future of politics in Britain.

READ: Inside the Greens' seismic Gorton and Denton win

Hannah Spencer, a plumber and Green Party councillor, is now the MP for Gorton and Denton.

The party takes the seat from right under Labour, following weeks of what was seen to be a three way race with Reform.

Megan Kenyon is joined by Ben Walker.

Should some children be given drugs to stop them going through puberty?

That's the question the NHS, the government and an independent research and ethics committee have been trying to answer.

The "Pathways" trial, backed by the NHS and led by a team from King's College London, aims to test the effectiveness and safety of puberty blockers for children experiencing gender dysphoria.

At the end of 2025, the trial was approved to go ahead. Health Secretary Wes Streeting reassured parliamentary colleagues it "could not have received more oversight and scrutiny".

But now the agency in charge of medicine regulation has U-turned. The study is now paused because of ethical and safety concerns. All of which, Hannah Barnes reports today on the New Statesman website, they knew about when they first approved it.

So how did the study get approved in the first place? And what does this tell us about the systems we trust to ensure medical research is safe and ethical?

Also: Baroness Amos has released the interim findings from her review into England's maternity care, and says the system is "not working".

Oli Dugmore is joined by Hannah Barnes to discuss.

READ MORE

Inside the decision to pause the puberty blockers trial

England's maternity system "not working" for anyone, report says

Last Thursday, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He has since been released under investigation. The police have searched Andrew's former home, Royal Lodge.

The former Prince's relationship to convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein is triggering a reckoning for not just Andrew, but the monarchy itself.

Oli Dugmore is joined by Will Lloyd to discuss.

This winter, Ai Weiwei returned to Beijing after a decade in exile. He found himself airbrushed from public memory. An international icon everywhere else. At home, a ghost.

The artist joined Michael Prodger soon after that trip to discuss the cost of personal freedom, in both China and in the West.

The Exchange is a new series from the New Statesman. Look out for new interviews every Wednesday.

On Thursday, a by-election in a Southern Manchester constituency, Gorton and Denton, is shaping up to be a seismic litmus test for British politics.

After the previous MP, Labour's Andrew Gwynne, stepped down in January, an opening for a new MP has set in motion a battle between Labour and their insurgent challengers, Reform and the Green Party.

Oli Dugmore is joined by our senior data journalist Ben Walker to discuss.

It has been four years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The war has settled into a grinding and uncertain stalemate.

Despite proving remarkably resilient, Ukraine, and the rest of the world, must face the question: What if Russia wins?

Katie Stallard explores this urgent question with German political scientist, Professor Carlo Masala.