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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 6m

The Conservatives’ annual conference felt like an audition for the leader’s survival, writes Raza Hussain.

Is this Kemi Badenoch’s last disco?

The Conservatives' annual conference feels like an audition for the leader’s survival

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 37m

Books and films informed our atomic nightmares during the Cold War. They are doing so again, writes @isabelh.bsky.social.

The new culture of nuclear fear

Books and films informed our atomic nightmares during the Cold War. They are doing so again

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 1h

📚 The lost world of homespun crafts…
📚 The hotel that tells the stories of Afghanistan…
📚 The return of a bestselling poet…
📚 The mania of Patricia Lockwood’s new novel…

This month’s Books in Brief:

Books in Brief: what to read this October

From the lost world of craft to the found world of a nail parlour, here are this month’s short reviews from the magazine

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 1h

“Tito è… partito.” Our classical columnist, Ian Bostridge, remembers the time he stormed out of Mozart rehearsals:

Classical notes: The ghosts of Rome

Returning to Britten’s ‘The Turn of the Screw’, in Italy’s capital, is its own uncanny experience

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 2h

Parts of the media are bemoaning the shrinking proportion of “white British” residents. The UK’s social norms about race were more fragile than I realised, writes @benansell.bsky.social.

Who’s ‘white British’? Who cares?

Politicians seem to be fuelling racist debate about what it means to be British, rather than calling it out

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 2h

Caollfhionn Gallagher KC reflects on the legacy of her friend Conor Gearty, who recently passed away...

He “won every debating competition in sight... Debate breaks down certainty, forcing you to enter the mind of the holder of an opposing point of view.”

The political prisoners club, and remembering Conor Gearty

My work takes me across the world, and I am always amazed at how those who have suffered such trauma spend time helping others

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 3h

“Sentences beginning ‘I met’, ‘I called’ or ‘I phoned’ inevitably end with a list of names…”

Fiammetta Rocco reviews art curator Hans Ulrich Obrist’s memoir:

Hans Ulrich Obrist: in with the madding crowd

The Swiss curator is one of the most famous guides to the world of contemporary art. In his new memoir, he shows the way…

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 4h

THE PITT won best drama at the Emmys. It’s been the talk of the televisual year in America… But you still can’t watch it in the UK.

@imogenwk.bsky.social on a streaming anomaly:

The best TV show you can’t watch

‘The Pitt’ was one of the success stories of the recent Emmy awards. So why, in this era of always-streamable shows, is it unavailable in the UK?

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 4h

The UK could soon leave the European Convention on Human Rights. What would this mean? “Everything and nothing”, writes Andrew Adonis.

What actually happens if we leave the ECHR?

Everything and nothing, is the answer

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 4h

Both the UK and the US face a choice between unchecked executive power or a balanced constitution—as exemplified by the countries’ two very different attorneys general, writes @davidallengreen.bsky.social.

Law versus politics

Both the UK and the US face a choice between unchecked executive power or a balanced constitution

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Reposted by Prospect Magazine

dag @davidallengreen.bsky.social · 6h

NEW

Law versus politics

Both the UK and the US face a choice between unchecked executive power or a balanced constitution

By me at @prospectmagazine.co.uk

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/ideas/law/th...

This is the crucial choice facing those both in the United Kingdom and the United States. What is to be the relationship between those with political power and the force of law?

In the United States it would seem that, at a federal level, both Congress and the Supreme Court are content to nod along with excessive use of presidential power. It is only the individual states themselves and the lower courts that are seeking to hold that executive power to account.

While in the United Kingdom there are louder political demands for the government to be free from the constraints placed by international law and supposedly activist judges. The implicit call is that ministers and officials should be able to do as they like to the rest of us without any possibility of a court ever saying otherwise.

What will happen in this contest between executive power and legal restraint cannot be predicted. The happy assumption of the Whig interpretation of history may not be well-grounded. From a liberal perspective things are not only getting worse, but could get a lot worse. The illiberals know what they are doing and they are doing it well.

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 5h

In today’s Lightbulb, Prospect’s free daily newsletter, @davidallengreen.bsky.social examines the role of attorney general in both the US and the UK. Plus, we remember lawyer and Prospect contributor Conor Gearty.

Trump’s legal lackey

Plus: is it time to jettison the idea of absolute free speech?

prospectmagazine.substack.com

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 5h

🎧: Media Confidential hosted a live episode about the real story behind the ITV drama The Hack, with actor Toby Jones—and the character he plays, @arusbridger.bsky.social. Listen to our audience Q+A:

The Hack: What happens now?

How do you turn one of the biggest media scandals into gripping television—and what unfinished business still lingers off-screen?

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 6h

How will future generations look back on us? This is the question novelist Ian McEwan explores in his new novel ‘What We Can Know’.

Ian McEwan: ‘We have robbed the past of its privacy’

The award-winning novelist on writing the future, hope and the climate crisis

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 7h

“In the 1980s and 1990s, freshers would tack posters of PARIS, TEXAS on their dorm room walls—next to those of ERASERHEAD and BETTY BLUE.”

Sukhdev Sandhu pays tribute to Wim Wenders, as the director turns 80:

Postwar man: Wim Wenders at 80

The great director was born in Düsseldorf in 1945. He and his films are as perceptive as ever in 2025

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 8h

Populist parties don’t always flame out. Indeed, it is more difficult for them to come to power the first time than to return to office, writes Ivan Krastev. How should liberals respond?

Liberalism in the end times

In an age of populist revolution and radical upheaval, can the centre left do anything more than survive?

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 9h

Nick Davies blew open the original phone-hacking scandal… Now he’s pieced together a previously untold story. Read exclusive content in Prospect–FREE for a limited time only.

Make Prospect your next call.

www.prospectmagazine...

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 10h

“In two years everything can break. All norms, all decency. In two years you can take a big idea, like shared humanity or international law, and empty it of all meaning.” @aloner.bsky.social marks October 7th.

Two years that broke our world

Since the Hamas attack of 7th October, what remains of big ideals such as our shared humanity?

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 22h

Wind and solar came close to surpassing global gas power generation in April, for the first time, writes @timsmedley.bsky.social.

As Bill McKibben says, “Everything is going wrong, except this one big thing.”

The great 2025 solar boom

One massive thing is going really well, according to veteran climate campaigner Bill McKibben

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 22h

🎧: Most Israelis refuse to see what their army is doing to Gazan people. Why?

@omerbartov.bsky.social, the Israeli-American professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, joins the Prospect Podcast.

Israeli genocide scholar: My country is in denial

Most Israelis refuse to see what their army is doing to Gazan people. This denialism has its roots in history

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 23h

He has promised to freeze rent, build more affordable housing, make childcare and buses free, and pay for it by raising taxes on the wealthy.

Atul Dev profiles Zohran Mamdani, the progressive populist leading the race for New York mayor.
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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 1d

“Children have to be taught that certain rules of behaviour must be followed if they are to get what they want. That lesson has not got through to little Donald.”

Who will teach Trump not to behave like a baby?

His state visit to the UK would have been comical if it wasn't so worrying

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 1d

Keir Starmer has taken to lashing out at Nigel Farage. But his real enemy isn’t Farage, it’s the state of the country, writes Andrew Adonis.

Why is Starmer focusing so much on Farage?

The prime minister’s real enemy isn’t Reform—it’s the state of the country

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 1d

Food accounts for a third of the climate problem… Agriculture uses 40% of the earth…

@mikegrunwald.bsky.social tells Philippa Nuttall why we need to fear the farm: “Holy shit! This is a big deal and people don’t know about it!”

‘Holy shit! This is a big deal and people don’t know about it!’

Michael Grunwald is used to writing about the effects of fossil fuels on the planet—but then he discovered what agriculture is doing. We spoke to him ...

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Prospect Magazine @prospectmagazine.co.uk · 1d

“In two years everything can break. All norms, all decency. In two years you can take a big idea, like shared humanity or international law, and empty it of all meaning.” @aloner.bsky.social marks October 7th.

Two years that broke our world

Since the Hamas attack of 7th October, what remains of big ideals such as our shared humanity?

www.prospectmagazine.co.uk

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