First Drafts - The Prospect magazine blog

Writing in the Guardian today, Cath Elliot trumpets the unanimously warm reception for a new attempt to lock men up for buying sex, in the form of a campaign called Demand Change. She’s proud of her own contribution to the debate, she says, though the hyperlink she gives for that contribution simply takes us to [...]

We are witnessing an unprecedented outpouring of anger at our political and financial elite, writes MG Zimeta in her web exclusive, free to read online this week. Fueled by the drip-feed of news about politicians’ embarrassing expense claims and the excessive bonuses paid to chairmen of banks bailed out by the taxpayer, our collective moral [...]

The two biggest stories in British politics: a likely change of government in 2010, and the financial mess it will inherit. Accordingly, two pieces in Prospect’s July opinions dig into both.
In the first, David Halpern, formerly a policy guru in Tony Blair’s strategy unit, unpicks how a future government will need to outsmart the Whitehall [...]

In this month’s cover story, journalist and award-winning novelist Edward Docx profiles the most powerful man in Britain: Peter Mandelson
Docx’s definitive portrait traces Mandelson’s long journey from his earliest experience of Labour politics on Lambeth council to his current position as first secretary of state and Labour’s unrivalled kingmaker. Mandelson, Docx argues, has had the [...]

The BBC’s funding is being raided and its output attacked more ferociously than ever, reports John Lloyd in this month’s Prospect. Earlier this month Stephen Carter’s Digital Britain report called for the BBC to share a slice of its licence fee with its struggling competitors. Could this mark the beginning of the end of public [...]

When novelist Monica Ali decided to set her third book in a hotel kitchen, she did a year’s research, spending time in five different London hotels and reading a small mountain of non-fiction books about the restaurant and hotel trades. At the end of it, she had so much material that she almost didn’t know [...]

As parliament and the media continue to obsess about the expenses scandal and parliamentary reform, it’s gone relatively unnoticed that prostitutes have persuaded MPs not to criminalise their clients, reports epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani, author of “The Wisdom of Whores,” in this month’s Prospect.
About time too, says Pisani—Jacqui Smith’s idea of punishing men who pay [...]

In the June issue of Prospect, Stephen Eales reported from inside command HQ on the nerve-wracking launch of two giant telescopes on the Ariane 5 space rocket. Stephen is leading two of the surveys that one of the telescopes, Herschel, is hoping to carry out. If successful, the mission could help solve some of the [...]

In his recent piece for Prospect, Anatol Lieven rightly raises the issue of current British defence policy, questioning current procurement programmes and the strategic concept of global intervention primarily with the US and/or Nato which underpins their development. Eurofighter, designed to interdict hostile jets, seems almost laughably superfluous, while the Royal Navy’s carriers–and especially Trident [...]

In this month’s Prospect, Stephen Eales reported from inside command HQ on the nerve-wracking launch of the Ariane 5 space rocket. Stephen is leading two of the surveys that the mission is hoping to carry out which, if successful, could help solve some of the deepest questions about how stars and galaxies are formed, and [...]