March 2023

March 2023 issue

Should Ukraine get round the negotiating table with Russia? Not yet, says Jonathan Powell, but the time will come and Kyiv must be ready. Vladimir Milov says Putin cannot be trusted and the only option is to exhaust his forces. Meanwhile, Bill McKibbe...

Past issues

© Sara Morris / The Retouching Shed

World

Ukraine must fight the war but plan for peace

It would be prudent for Kyiv to start thinking about a negotiated settlement, writes Jonathan Powell, who led negotiations in Northern Ireland. But formidable obstacles lie ahead

Jonathan Powell

People

Image: John Watson

Maurice Saatchi: Conservatives must avoid seeming ‘obsessed with money’

David McAllister

The organiser leading Britain’s first Amazon workers’ strike

Image: John Watson

John Mather: ‘I never expected to see individual stars in the dawn of time’

Image courtesy Amelia Nagoski

Is ‘self-care’ anti-feminist?

Image: John Watson

The diversity consultant trying to make Love Island more inclusive

Columns

Average ambulance wait times for patients having a stroke stand at an hour and a half. Photo: Andrew Hasson / Alamy Stock Photo

How the NHS crisis epitomises everything wrong with the UK’s political system

Rosie Holt’s diary: living in the skin of a Tory MP

© Prospect / Alamy

Ed Miliband: Britain was once a climate leader. It can be again

Illustration by Vincent Kilbride

Tech has an innate problem with bullshitters. But we don’t need to let them win

Ethan Zuckerman

John Rawls said "inequalities of wealth and authority are just only if they result in compensating benefits for everyone"

The philosophical meaning of equality

When the word “prick” was a compliment

Regulars

Illustration by Michael Rea

Shehan Karunatilaka: Since I won the Booker, everybody wants to talk to me

The Prospect Grid: March 2023

Letters: March 2023 edition

Essays

© Sara Morris / The Retouching Shed

Ukraine must fight the war but plan for peace

Jonathan Powell

© Arseniy Shemyakin Photo/shutterstock

Negotiations? Putin’s word in peace talks would be worthless

Illustration by Gregori Saavedra

Could this be the year finance finally starts to help the climate?

The next general election will be Labour’s to lose

© David McAllister / Prospect

Three years on, Covid lab-leak theories aren’t going away. This is why

All monument: a design plan for Trojena’s artificial lake, within Saudi Arabia’s proposed new megacity of Neom. It is already slated to host the Asian Winter Games in 2029. Image: NEOM / AFP

Welcome to Neom, Saudi Arabia’s desert dystopia in the making

Alert to capitalism’s crises: the FT’s chief economics commentator Martin Wolf. Photography for Prospect by Sarah Lee

When markets fail, according to Martin Wolf

Arts & Books

The next day’s victims: a Chinese dissident being publicly humiliated during the Cultural Revolution © Li Zhensheng/Contact Press Images/eyevine

The Chinese Communist Party is trying to rewrite history. It will fail

Illustration by Michael Rea

Shehan Karunatilaka: Since I won the Booker, everybody wants to talk to me

Pop goes everything

Moral panics: a woodcut depicting the execution of King Charles I © Look and Learn/Bernard Platman Antiquarian Collection/Bridgeman Images

The (first) post-Elizabethan age

Illustration by Matt Holland

Meet the archive moles

As the Amazon falls, the people suffer

Elegy for a wonderful, dying land

Where on Earth is paradise?

Sex, secrets and pea soupers: ‘The New Life’ reviewed

Home invasion—by the book

Daisy Sainsbury

Image: Jordan Hemmingway

Hip-hop? Pop? R&B? Who cares? Music is saying farewell to genre

Freed from desire: How Rebecca Frecknall revitalised Tennessee Williams

© Jacques PRAYER/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images

John Boorman: Point-blank genius

© Geoffrey Swaine/Shutterstock

Keeping up with the Sussexes

Imogen West-Knights

Lives

Illustration by Clara Nicoll

Clerical life: Will the Church of England survive?

Illustration by Clara Nicoll

Displaced life: Social dynamics in Doncaster hold young people back

Jason Thomas-Fournillier

Illustration by Clara Nicoll

Long life: “In old age I seldom have conversations about sex”

Illustration by Clara Nicoll

Young life: I slept with my ex-boyfriend on Christmas day

Illustration by Clara Nicoll

Mindful life: My journey with electroconvulsive therapy

Rebecca Lawrence

Illustration by Clara Nicoll

Sporting life: Does live sport still matter?

Illustration by Clara Nicoll

Farming life: “I hope I remember today forever”