[4][5] It featured the headline "A Kosher Conspiracy", promoting articles by Dennis Sewell and John Pilger respectively concerning the alleged Zionist lobby in Britain and Tony Blair's appointment of Michael Levy as his special envoy in the Middle East.
[8] A scoop Wilby was fond of at the time concerned an interview with the physician, professor and Labour peer Robert Winston.
[8] Julia Langdon wrote in the British Journalism Review around the same time that the NS under Wilby had a reputation in the "political trade" for "being either dull, or silly".
[9] A New Statesman article in autumn 2004 by Robert Service, then Professor of Russian History at Oxford University, and in particular the cover illustration, portrayed Tony Blair as the modern equivalent of Joseph Stalin.
[10][11] Wilby's deputy, Cristina Odone, resigned in early November 2004 for unconnected reasons, although she did object to the cover.
[10] As a result of the magazine being unsympathetic to New Labour, Cristina Odone wrote in The Observer that she believed Wilby was pushed out of his post in preparation for Gordon Brown becoming prime minister.
[16][17] While circulation was much the same when Wilby assumed the role as when he relinquished it in 2005, he wrote in an article for the British Journalism Review that he had managed to turn "a substantial financial loss into a healthy operating profit".