January 2016

January 2016 issue

The Prospect team predicts the biggest ideas of 2016, Lucy Wadham writes on the 'Bataclan generation', Anatole Kaletsky examines the UK's jobs boom, Simon Wren-Lewis discusses Labour's economic policy, Umberto Eco explains what he'd do as ruler of the...

Past issues

Essays

© illustration by Ben Jennings

More jobs by the day—but why?

Anatole Kaletsky

President Lyndon B. Johnson on the phone in the White House with Dr. William Pickering receiving a report about the Mariner-4 space mission. © CSU Archives/Everett/REX Shutterstock (707399a)

What Robert Caro taught me about the individual

Twelve things you need to know about Brexit

John Springford & Simon Tilford

The big ideas of 2016: post-digi—the return of the book

The big ideas of 2016: return of the pay rise

The big ideas of 2016: services for the gig economy

The big ideas of 2016: end of the peace dividend

Pro-European protestors in Kiev’s Independence Square in December 2013: “It was a winter of great possibility” © © VASILY MAXIMOV/AFP/Getty Images

Ukraine's tug of war

Annabelle Chapman

The big ideas of 2016: the Alzheimer's economy

“Citizens of the world with a taste for adventure”: young people drinking by the Canal Saint-Martin in Paris’s 10th arrondissement. © © LUDOVIC MARIN/AFP/Getty Images

Paris's Bataclan Generation: “This is our struggle, not yours”

The big ideas of 2016: bipolar Britain

Jonathan Derbyshire

The big ideas of 2016: project integration

The big ideas of 2016

The big ideas of 2016: the Great Default

Jonathan Derbyshire

Billy Bragg in a South Bank Show documentary broadcast in 1985. © ITV/REX Shutterstock

Billy Bragg: the Bard of Barking

The big ideas of 2016: redrawing borders

The big ideas of 2016: the end of gender

Serena Kutchinsky

The big ideas of 2016: growth of the Anglosphere/decline of the Brics

The big ideas of 2016: pick-and-mix Europe

Jonathan Derbyshire

Regulars

© Leonardo cendarmo

If I ruled the world: Umberto Eco

Duel: Should we tell children that Santa Claus doesn’t exist?

Amanda Craig & Simon Jenkins

Pink Mist examines the physical and psychological effects of war © BUSH THEATRE / PHOTO BY MARK DOUET

Prospect recommends: things to do this month

Barbara Skelton modelling the "little black dress." © Baron/Getty Images

The way we were: unsuitable Christmas presents

Opinions

A woman wears a breathing mask in smog in Beijing, which issued the red alert for heavy air pollution in Early December. ©GAO JIANJUN/LANDOV/Press Association Images

Forgetting about the Beijing smog

Assistant Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra gives a press statement on Lee Rigby's death from outside the Masjid Umar mosque in Leicester. ©Rui Vieira/PA Wire

Who speaks for Muslims in Britain?

Pro-Islamic State demonstrators carry the group's flags in front of provincial government headquarters in Mosul, Iraq. ©AP

Daesh: It is not Islamic, or a state and this isn't a war

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks to journalists after meeting with French President Francois Hollande to discuss military action in Syria. ©AP, Alexander Zemlianichenko, pool

What is Putin's real agenda in Syria and Ukraine?

The UK border at Heathrow airport. ©Danny Howard, dannyman

How prejudiced are we anyway?

Republican Presidential candidate Jeb Bush files the paperwork making him eligible to run in the New Hampshire Primary elections in early 2016.

The US primaries: a political failure

Somali military march at a Ministry of Defense compound during celebrations on the 55th anniversary of the Somalia force in Mogadishu, Somalia, Sunday, April 12, 2015. © AP Photo/Farah Abdi Warsameh

President of Somalia: how my country defeated extremism

Hassan Sheikh Mohamud

French soldiers patrol in front of Lyon's courthouse, central France, Friday, Nov. 27, 2015. © AP Photo/Laurent Cipriani

After Paris: the politics of terror

Christine Ockrent

©Niall Carson/PA Wire/Press Association Images

What should Labour's economic policy look like?

Simon Wren-Lewis

Arts & Books

Were medieval magicians experimental scientists?

Book Review: Atmosphere of Hope: Solutions to the Climate Crisis by Tim Flannery

"Mammon and His Slave", wood engraving, published by Johann Jacob Weber, Leipzig

Time for radical changes in our economic thinking

The iCub humanoid robot at IDSIA's robotics lab in Switzerland ©Juxi

Are only poets safe from robots?

© Leonardo cendarmo

If I ruled the world: Umberto Eco

Primo Levi wrote that the Nazis were "made from the same cloth as us." © Martin Argles/Guardian/Camera Press

Primo Levi: A life shaped by darkness

Book Review: The Red Web by Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan

Book Review: The President and the Apprentice by Irwin F Gellman

Book Review: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan

Books in brief: reviews of must read books in January

Book Review: Outsider in the White House by Bernie Sanders

Robert Colville

Book Review: Ted Hughes, The Unauthorised Life by Jonathan Bate

Barbara Skelton modelling the "little black dress." © Baron/Getty Images

The way we were: unsuitable Christmas presents

Book Review: Who is Charlie? By Emmanuel Todd

Jonathan Derbyshire

Book Review: Orson Weles: One-Man Band by Simon Callow

Society and Culture

A wine glass stands on table in front of a Christmas tree.

Wine: how to pick a great bottle for Christmas

Two people take a walk through the snow.

How to listen for the unsaid

©Simon Cunningham

The best and worst moments in 2015's markets

A cracker laid on the table for Christmas dinner. ©Amelia Wells

Should we try and reimagine the Christmas feast?

Wendell Steavenson

The lights on on the Christmas tree in Trafalgar square are switched on. December, 2015. ©Daniel Leal-Olivas/PA Wire

Why I want someone to buy me socks for Christmas