Columnists

Columns

Nick Cohen

Can Tom Watson save Labour?

The phrase ‘existential crisis’ is thrown around too easily. But it is hard to find a better description of the state of the Labour party, whose members and supporters overwhelmingly oppose Brexit but whose leader and advisors cling to the old Communist party line that the EU is a ‘capitalist club’. Previously solid followers of

Re-wilders forget that humans are ‘nature’ too

‘Life pours back in.’ A score of us, listening to Charlie Burrell at the Knepp estate ten days ago, will always remember his words: so palpably true. We could see just what he meant as he took us through his work ‘re-wilding’ the estate in West Sussex where he and his wife, Isabella Tree, live

Where is the Democrat who can take on Trump?

I have plenty of shamefaced company in having rashly predicted, as pundits are warned never to do, that Donald Trump wouldn’t win the White House in 2016. I don’t plan on repeating that mistake. Liberals are especially prone to confuse the words ‘should’ and ‘will’. Just because Trump shouldn’t win in 2020 doesn’t mean he

Save us from the civil service and the BBC

I was asked on to the BBC Today programme — my old manor — last week to talk about the Women’s World Cup. The producers had noticed that I’d changed my mind about the event and now thought it all rather good fun, having hitherto been derisively misogynistic. ‘This is the thing,’ I said to

The Spectator's Notes

The Spectator’s Notes | 4 July 2019

The Cabinet Secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, is offering to meet Jeremy Corbyn about the Times story last week which reported that senior civil servants were worried Mr Corbyn was ‘too frail and is losing his memory’. As usual with such stories, one cannot know their exact truth, but there is a general trend in the

Any other business