ISSUE 139 OCTOBER 2007

Contributors to this issue

PHILIP BALL is a science writer and author of The Devil’s Doctor (Arrow)

MARK BELL is a researcher at the liberal think tank CentreForum

DAVID BIRCH is an author and consultant. He chairs the Digital Identity Forum

VERNON BOGDANOR is professor of government at Oxford University

BARTLE BULL is writing a history of the fertile crescent for Atlantic Books

JOHN CORNWELL is the author of Darwin’s Angel: An Angelic Riposte to ‘The God Delusion’ (Profile)

MARK COUSINS is the author of The Story of Film (Pavilion Books)

ALEX DE WAAL is a director at the Social Science Research Council and the author of Darfur (Zed Books)

ROBERT DRUMMOND is a psychiatrist

CONOR GEARTY is the author of Civil Liberties (OUP)

AC GRAYLING ’s latest book is Towards the Light (Bloomsbury)

CHRISTOPHER HIRD is joint managing director of Fulcrum Productions

IAN JACK is the former editor of Granta. He writes for the Guardian

MARTIN KETTLE is a Guardian columnist

BEN LEWIS presents BBC4’s Art Safari

GWYNETH LEWIS was Wales’s first national poet from 2005 to 2006

ALISON MACLEOD ’s short story collection Fifteen Modern Tales of Attraction has just been published by Penguin

ADAM MAREK is the author of Instruction Manual for Swallowing (Comma Press)

FERDINAND MOUNT ’s most recent book is The Condor’s Head (Chatto & Windus)

ALASDAIR MURRAY is director of the liberal think tank CentreForum

MICHAEL PREST is a freelance writer specialising in business and economics

ALEX RENTON won the 2006 Glenfiddich award for best food writer

DAVID ROBINS ’s books include Knuckle Sandwich and We Hate Humans (Penguin)

FREDDIE SAYERS is a commentator on British and American politics

IAN STEWART is author of Why Beauty Is Truth: The History of Symmetry (Basic)

JACK STRAW is justice secretary and lord chancellor

KEVIN WATKINS is senior research fellow at Oxford University’s global economic governance programme

contents

Coverstory 22In search of British values In July,Gordon Brown published a green paper called “The Governance of Britain.”The final section said that we need to be clearer about what it means to be British.It proposed “to work with the public to develop a British statement of values.” We asked 50 writers and intellectuals what they thought.

Opinions

14Northern Rock lessons What led to a mini-crisis in Britain’s banking system? MICHAEL PREST

15No more Mr Nice Guy Gordon Brown should abandon this nicey-nicey politics. FREDDIE SAYERS

16Send in the peacemakers Diplomacy and a peace deal offer the best hope of solving Darfur. ALEX DE WAAL

18Politics without a majority How will politics be changed by a hung parliament? ALASDAIR MURRAY & MARK BELL

19Living with West Lothian “English votes for English laws”will cause the union to break up. JACK STRAW

Essays

28Mission accomplished With most Sunni factions now seeking a deal, the big questions in Iraq have been resolved positively. The country remains one, it has embraced democracy and avoided all-out civil war. What violence remains is largely local and criminal. BARTLE BULL

34Dilemmas of terror There are two approaches to counter-terrorism in Britain—the judicial track, emphasising evidence and due process; and the secret service track, which focuses on intelligence. How does today’s terrorist threat affect the balance between the two? CONOR GEARTY

40Rebuilding Conservatism David Cameron wants to heal the rift between Thatcherites and modernisers while also coining a distinctive new Tory ideology. To achieve this, he must ditch flashy initiatives and show that he is truly committed to decentralising Britain. FERDINAND MOUNT

My story

46A poet at Cern As poet-in-residence at Cardiff astronomy department, I want to understand the sub-atomic science and the people behind the world’s largest particle collider. GWYNETH LEWIS

Witness

50A summer of stabbings It is not clear whether gun and knife crime is on the rise, but it does seem to be increasingly concentrated among resentful young males in thrall to the cult of cool. DAVID ROBINS

4 Prospect OCTOBER2007