Nick Cohen is the author of What's Left and You Can't Read This Book.
The trouble with plebiscites is that they leave the plebs stranded. A complicated issue is reduced to one question: should we leave the EU, yes or no. Nowhere on the ballot does it ask whether we should leave the single market or currency union, crash into the WTO without trade agreements with the rest of
‘Populism’ is a useless word. By definition, anyone who wins an election is more popular than his or her opponents are. According to this logic, John Major and Barack Obama must have once been ‘populists’, which does not sound right at all. When we use ‘populist’ today, we should mean something more than popular. The
In the first days of January ‘17, the Arctic air frosted over London forcing even the most careless citizen of that metropolis to accept the mastery of those great elemental forces which shriek at mankind through the bars of his civilisation. Holmes would not move from his fire, and was as moody as only he
I mean no disrespect to the dead when I say that Islamist terror in the developed world can seem a pathetic affair. Instead of fanatics executing elaborate plots to attack the Twin Towers and Pentagon, we have ‘lone wolves’ radicalised online, who more often than not turn out to be mentally deficient losers, rather than
There are three misconceptions about the far left. Not one of them is true. And all of them hide the crisis in the opposition, which is giving a dangerously incompetent Government unparalleled and unwarranted freedom of manoeuvre. The first is that its obsession with doctrinal disputes makes far leftists Pythonesque figures of ridicule, rather than a malicious force with malign political consequences. We
In his admirably brief and necessarily brutal, Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now, Ian Dunt tells how civil servants brief business leaders while they wait to meet David Davis. For all his appearance as a tough guy with the strength to handle the most complicated diplomatic crisis the British have faced since the Second World
Trump’s victory sets a test for conservatives, a test they are failing with embarrassing ineptitude. They are making the oldest mistake in politics. They are carrying on as if nothing has changed. In the early 21st century, it was easy to attack the supposed liberal left. These alleged liberals were for real censorship. The white working
Labour’s election then re-election of Jeremy Corbyn was the equivalent of a suicidal man who, when the noose snaps and gives him a second chance, decides to throw himself off a cliff instead. The Liberal Democrats are too small to get a hearing. The Scottish nationalists will speak only for Scotland. The only arguments that
I have never advised anyone to use the English libel laws. I spent years helping the campaign to reform them, and am proud of the liberalisation I and many, many others helped bring. I have to admit, though, our achievement was modest. Libel in England remains sinister in intent – the defendant has to prove
The silencing of Stephen Daisley has nagged away at journalism in Scotland for months. His employer, STV, holds the ITV licences for central and northern Scotland, and is staying very quiet. The Scottish National Party rolls around like a drunk who has won a bar fight. Its politicians and its claque of Twitter trolls celebrate
Understand what this government is trying to get away with, and think about how it is trying to get away with it, and you will see it is reconstituting the oldest and dirtiest alliance in Tory-history: the alliance between snobs and mobs. I accept it takes a while to see our new rulers for what
Opponents of demagogues from Donald Trump to Nigel Farage have suffered from a huge political disadvantage. They were either politicians who were or had been in power, and had to take responsibility for all the failures and compromises power brings as inevitably as blisters on weary feet. Or they were voters, who thought that mainstream
Those of us on the left can all too easily imagine how our political rivals felt when watching Jeremy Corbyn’s latest victory speech. English Conservatives and Scottish Nationalists do not wake at 3 a.m., drenched in sweat, worrying about how they can defeat him. Like a drunk who punches his own face, Corbyn beats himself, leaving Labour’s
Those of us on the left should imagine how our political rivals felt when watching Jeremy Corbyn’s latest victory speech. English Conservatives and Scottish Nationalists do not wake at 3 a.m., drenched in sweat, worrying about how they can defeat Jeremy Corbyn. Like a drunk who punches his own face, Corbyn beats himself, leaving Labour’s rivals
The worst men always find themselves in others. If they are instinctive liars, they accuse their opponents of lying. If they mistreat women, they assume all other men do the same. If they are sleazy, over-promoted know-nothings, they see their angry faces in every stranger they meet. On this reading, Liam Fox’s barroom tirades are
Julian Assange still has not found the courage to face the women who accuse him of sexual abuse. Rather than try to clear his name, he has sat in the basement of the Ecuadorian embassy in Knightsbridge for four years – a confinement long enough to drive most of us out of our minds. If
What follows is an appeal to Jeremy Corbyn supporters to think again. It’s from Chris, a Labour party member, who does not want to give his full name for fear of abuse. He has compiled a vast, but by no means exhaustive list of the moral and political failings of the Labour leader. He told
The Baltic states do not feel like a front line. I did not see a police officer in more than a week in Latvia, let alone a soldier. Somewhere out there were three NATO battalions, deployed to deter Putin from crossing the border. But if it wasn’t for the seediness that lingers like a bad
Thoughtful writing about the Corbyn phenomenon is not just impossible to find, it is impossible to imagine. Admirers live in a land of make believe as closed to the rest of the world as North Korea. They barely know how to explain themselves to outsiders because they cannot imagine any honourable reason for outsiders disagreeing
At the start of the 21st century, no one felt the need to reach for studies of ‘third-period’ communism to understand British and American politics. By 2016, I would say that they have become essential. Admittedly, connoisseurs of the communist movement’s crimes have always thought that 1928 was a vintage year. The Soviet Union had
