CONTRIBUTORS TO THIS ISSUE

STEPHEN ALLOTT is a business and social entrepreneur

PAUL BARKER is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Community Studies, Bethnal Green

PAUL BROKS is the author of Into the Silent Land (Atlantic Books)

HARVEY COLE is a former leader of Hampshire county council

PHILIP COLLINS is director of the Social Market Foundation

EMMA CRICHTON-MILLER is an art writer and journalist

BOBBY DUFFY is research director of Mori

STEPHEN EVERSON is writing a book on metaphysics and the mind

JAMES FERGUSSON is the author of Kandahar Cockney (Harper Perennial), published in paperback on 4th April

TIM HAMES is an assistant editor, columnist and chief leader writer at the Times

OWEN HARRIES is a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies in Australia

OLIVIA JUDSON is the author of Dr Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation (Vintage)

JONATHON KEATS is the author of the novels The Pathology of Lies (Warner) and Lighter Than Vanity (Eksmo)

TIM KING is a writer and documentarymaker living in France

BEN LEWIS presented the BBC4 series, Art Safari

YIYUN LI ’s collection of short stories, A Thousand Years of Good Prayers , will be published next year by Fourth Estate

BRENDA MADDOX ’s books include Rosalind Franklin: the Dark Lady of DNA (HarperCollins)

TOM NUTTALL is a senior editor of Prospect

MICHAEL PEEL is west Africa correspondent of the Financial Times

ANTHONY ROBINSON is a former FT Moscow correspondent and consulting editor of Vedomost

IAN STEWART is a professor of mathematics at Warwick University

RODERICK SWANSTON is a reader of the Royal College of Music

KEN WORPOLE is writing a book about the landscape and history of 20thcentury Essex

4PROSPECT April 2005

contents Issue one hundred and nine April 2005

COVER STORY

20Britain rediscovered NEAL ASCHERSON

BILLY BRAGG

GORDON BROWN

LINDA COLLEY

DAVID GOODHART

ERIC KAUFMANN

DAVID LAMMY

KENAN MALIK

TARIQ MODOOD

ROGER SCRUTON

Politicians of the left like Gordon Brown want to construct a stronger sense of British identity. What should it be based on?

OPINIONS 12Before and after

BOBBY DUFFY & HARVEY COLE Does giving the voters the facts on issues like the NHS change their views?Up to a point.

14Nigeria neglected

MICHAEL PEEL Africa’s biggest country illustrates the western dilemma of how to help corrupt states.

15Parity ofesteem

PHILIP COLLINS Academic and vocational education will never be equal. But vocational could be better.

17People,not ideas

STEPHEN ALLOTT Scientific research can promote economic growth, but not in the way the government is going about it.

ESSAYS 26Power and morals

OWEN HARRIES Realists argue that foreign policy is necessarily amoral. Liberals want to apply domestic moral standards to international policy. Both of these views are flawed.

32Conservative futures

TIM HAMES There are five roads the Tories must avoid:Fortress Britain, Libertarian Paradise, Thatcherism Revisited, Local Everything and Scepticism Rediscovered. Look to New Labour.

36The Yukos affair

ANTHONY ROBINSON The arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky marked the end of the positive phase of the Putin regime and the return of fear. But now there is a new spirit of resistance to creeping authoritarianism. www.prospect-magazine.co.uk

42London witness

PAUL BARKER Nikolaus Pevsner wanted his guides to show that English architecture could match anything in Europe. His guide to east London, now revised, opened my eyes in the 1960s.

WITNESS 48Britain’s front line

JAMES FERGUSSON Lunar House in Croydon is the dump where most asylum seekers have their claims processed. For Britain to have robust and fair border controls, it has got to start working better.

COLUMNS 10Out ofmind

PAUL BROKS Introducing Broks’s Paradox.

19Washington watch

TUMBLER Condi vs Hillary?

47France profonde

TIM KING Strange birth of the French biopic.

52Brussels diary

MANNEKEN PIS This sporting life.

80These islands

KEN WORPOLE Cars are killing our gardens.

REGULARS 3Foreword 6Letters 8News & Curiosities plus Enigmas & puzzles IAN STEWART 13Numbers game THE CRUNCHER 75Classifieds 78The generalist DIDYMUS 79The list

arts&books

69Just don’t call it paternalism

TOM NUTTALL Richard Layard may have hit upon a new defining mission for politics. It’s just a pity he can’t call it what it is.

FICTION 54After a life

YIYUN LI For 28 years, Mr and Mrs Su have kept their daughter hidden away from the world.

REVIEWS 64The fading ofFreud

BRENDA MADDOX Talking cures have their place, but psychoanalytic theory has faded into brain science. Adam Phillips’s attempt to define sanity is beside the point.

65Return ofthe social novel

JONATHON KEATS Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel about clones is more Henry James than Aldous Huxley. It has Victorian echoes.

67A unified theory ofmusic?

RODERICK SWANSTON Richard Taruskin’s six-volume history of western classical music is personal, incomplete and magnificent.

CULTURAL TOURIST 72The design concept

EMMA CRICHTON-MILLER The age of the design prize is here. Plus news and listings.

COLUMNS 62Widescreen

OLIVIA JUDSON Finally, some proper Hollywood sex.

71Private view

BEN LEWIS Bacon’s pictures are like bacon.

74Musical notes

STEPHEN EVERSON Singing while sick.

FORTHCOMING

GeoffMulgan reflects on seven years in government

Julian Evans tilts at Cervantes

Anatole Kaletsky on whatever happened to the business cycle

Margaret Drabble reads the Dictionary of National Biography

THE NEXT ISSUE OF PROSPECT IS PUBLISHED ON 21ST APRIL

POLITICAL PUBLICATION OF THE YEAR

Political Studies Association

PROSPECT April 2005 5