As Prospect went to press, Britain's Royal Society (RS) had just chosen to relieve the Reverend Michael Reiss of his responsibilities as its director of education. Reiss's crime was to suggest that if a child in a science lesson asked a question about creationism, teachers had a duty to explain that creationism is a belief with no basis in scientific evidence. A blitz of headlines duly reported Reiss as saying that creationism should be taught in schools. This was too much for the society to handle, and some of its biggest brains—including two Nobel prize-winners, Harry Kroto and Richard Roberts—asked for (and obtained) the Reverend's head.
The RS has come under fire recently for its links with the Templeton Foundation—an organisation devoted to finding links between science and religion—which funded a course of lectures there. Yet it wasn't the quality of these lectures so much as their mere existence that offended the militant atheists. Similarly, is it really Reiss's suggestion that schools should engage with "a non-scientific worldview" that has stirred objections? Or the mere fact that he is an ordained minister? The faithless might remember that eliding all religious belief with extremism can be self-defeating.
Next year is the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth, and excited scientists are busy party-planning. The elephant in the room is that creationism has just acquired its biggest pin-up. Getting rid of Michael Reiss was easy. Sacking Sarah Palin will be much more difficult. Perhaps the RS should be trying to find more common ground with religious intellectuals rather than ripping itself to shreds.
On facts and films
Our thanks to all who entered last month's "in fact" competition. The five winning entries can be seen heading this month's column—and each contributor will receive a copy of our shiny new In Fact book (copies of which can be purchased by all fact-lovers in good bookshops and at www.infact.org.uk).
In a record autumn for such publications, October sees another Prospect book hitting the shelves—Mark Cousins's Widescreen: Watching. Real. People. Elsewhere (Wallflower Press), a collection of his finest columns from the magazine. Once again, we have several copies to give away, and the competition this time has a cinematic theme: send your most imaginative title for a (putative) classic new Brit-flick, such as might open October's BFI London film festival, to film@prospect-magazine.co.uk before 13th October.
PUMA attacks
The thinking behind PUMA (Party Unity My Ass)—a splinter group of Democrats vowing to vote for John McCain in November in protest at Hillary's defeat—always seemed puzzling. The idea that these outraged feminists were so bitter about their loss that they would vote for McCain and his hockey-mom sidekick—who opposes abortion in all cases, including rape and incest, and advocates compulsory teaching of creationism—just didn't seem to make sense. What we now know is that PUMA was founded by a Darragh Murphy, whose only political donation to date has been to John McCain, in 2000.
Democrats have cried foul. But whether PUMA was a vehicle of Republican sabotage or not, its failure to seriously disrupt the Denver convention suggests its support was exaggerated; party unity, it seems, is safer than we thought. This is why Dems giggled when prominent Hillary supporter Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, described in Portfolio magazine as "the flashiest hostess in London," and mistress of the 3,200-acre Rothschild family estate in Buckinghamshire, announced her endorsement of McCain, saying Obama was "elitist." As Mickey Kaus at Slate put it: "you lost me at 'de'."
Gove grounded
Tory éminence grise Michael Gove must be relieved he has a domestic brief. As shadow secretary of state for children, schools and families, he spends most of his time trogging around Britain; there's no need for much overseas travel. This is not, one hastens to add, because Gove has any particular dislike of other countries. It's because he has a fear of flying—something he shares, amusingly, with Tony Blair. Our last prime minister even drove to Italy on his honeymoon to dodge a flight. But now Gove is taking counselling to cure the phobia. With the Tories soaring in the polls, what might this mean? Is the shadow minister on his way to a post that would send him overseas more? As he himself recently observed: "When I'm travelling to Ulster, Germany or the US, it is not really practical to cycle."
Booker's droop
Everyone has an opinion about Booker books—but what on earth has happened to the judges? asks David Herman. George Steiner recently triggered a mini-controversy by saying that the panel in 1972, which happened to feature the great man, was the best ever (it also included Cyril Connolly and Elizabeth Bowen). Others have noted that 1971 (John Gross, Saul Bellow, John Fowles) and 1973 (Karl Miller, Edna O'Brien, Mary McCarthy) give Steiner a good run for his money. Since then, standards have slipped dramatically. This year may be a new low. These days, it seems almost anybody but a well-known novelist or literary critic—a retired politician (Portillo, Chris Smith, Kenneth Baker, Gerald Kaufman), a literary editor (David Sexton, Erica Wagner, Alex Clark), a poet, an actor—will do.
Now that a compromise deal for a coalition government in Zimbabwe has been agreed, can those old foes Mugabe and Tsvangirai make it work? asks Stephen Chan. All the talk of whether Mugabe—who is set to retain control of the army, while Tsvangirai will control the police and chair the council of ministers—might sabotage matters is misplaced. What matters is whether Tsvangirai has the skills to deliver—and whether the west can put aside its visceral antipathy towards Mugabe and put money behind the new prime minister.
The deal is a belated triumph for Thabo Mbeki. But at the same time as Mbeki completed his mediation, South African courts struck down charges against the ANC's president—and Mbeki's great rival—Jacob Zuma, and criticised the president for a politically directed prosecution of the man who will probably succeed him next April. The Zuma verdict marks the ascendancy of a man sure to take a tougher line on Mugabe—and leaves Mbeki a lame-duck president who may not even make it as far as 2009.
Et tu, Cairns?
David Cairns has been dubbed Labour's most significant anti-Gordon Brown rebel. But perhaps the epithet he really deserves is that of most ungrateful. After all, Cairns, a former Catholic priest, owes his political career to reforms pushed through by Brown and Blair in 2001, when the government abolished a law preventing ex-priests from standing for parliament specifically to allow Cairns to enter the Commons. And when Brown became PM last year, further favour beckoned—Cairns was promoted to a comfortable berth in the Scotland office. This allowed him to draw an extra entitlement of £39,893, taking his total whack to £101,713 (rather more than the collection plate in a Clydeside church). In return, he was meant to stave off the SNP advance by attacking what he called the "McChattering classes." If the Glasgow East by-election campaign, which Cairns managed, is anything to go by, this has not been a total success. The result? A 23 per cent swing to Salmond's nats.
Julie Burchill
Julie Burchill has a generous fondness for appearing in new or relaunched publications (no sour grapes here, Julie) and so duly starred in the recent relaunch of Reader's Digest. But her charming piece about the Salvation Army starts with several howlers about a subject which used to be close to her heart—British trade unions. She praises the Sally Army for not bowing to fashion and changing its name—and then bemoans the disappearance of "solid old unions" such as the GPMU and MSF. Both, in fact, were less than 25 years old. Indeed, the "old" GPMU was only formed in 1991 from a merger of the NGA and Sogat.
