Nick Cohen is the author of What's Left and You Can't Read This Book.
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In these mean times a glimmer of light can pass for a dawn. Here is one heartening ray. On the international day of solidarity in defence of the Syrian Kurds, Labour MPs and activists have issued a plain request to Ed Miliband to stop being such a jerk. They don’t quite put it like that,
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Over the top: British soldiers in the trenches (Image: Getty) The allies did not sweep into Germany in 1918, winning the First World War with the glory and élan of a victorious army. The victors triumphed because they held their disintegrating forces together better than Germany and Austria-Hungary could manage. In the end, and in
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The British recruits who have joined Isis are not exceptions. They flourish in a culture in which it is so commonplace to offer support to authoritarian regimes and movements that few bother to condemn it. Free speech ought to mean the freedom to challenge and criticise in all except the most tightly defined circumstances. Instead
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If a bus driver were heading towards the edge of a cliff, the passengers would try to seize control of the wheel in all cases except one. Members of the Parliamentary Labour Party would sit back in their seats, put on their most confident smiles, and tell each other they were going full-speed ahead in
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[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_9_Oct_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson and Lord Falconer discuss the police’s use of Ripa” startat=57] Listen [/audioplayer]With the possible, although far from certain, exception of the men and women who hire me, it is fair to say that Britain’s editors have a death wish. They suppress their own freedom. They hold out their wrists and beg
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If graduates from an architecture school designed buildings that were unfit for human habitation or doctors from a university’s medical faculty left death in their wake, their teachers would worry. The graduates of Oxford’s Politics, Philosophy and Economics course form the largest single component of the most despised generation of politicians since the Great Reform
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During the referendum campaign nothing astonished me and Labour campaigners more than left wing English intellectuals embracing Scottish nationalism. It was not that they did not have the right to speak, but that they had so little regard for traditional left wing concerns about the welfare of the Scottish working class. Rather than thinking
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Nationalists build walls to keep their people in and the rest out. They create ‘us’ and ‘them’. Friends and enemies. If you disagree, if you say they have no right to speak for you because not all Scots/Serbs/Germans/Russians/Israelis think the same or recognise their lines of the map, you become a traitor to the collective.
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[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_11_Sept_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Fraser Nelson, Tom Holland and Leah McLaren discuss how we can still save the Union” startat=50] Listen [/audioplayer]One way or another, English nationalism, a beast the union kept in its cage, will prowl the land after the Scottish vote. If the Scots leave, of course, then nothing will stand in its way. The
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When Thomas Piketty published his Capital in the 21 Century, the Financial Times tried to dismiss his research as bogus. Its more conventional thinkers hated his argument that the children of the rich would receive vast amounts of unearned wealth because the assets of their parents would grow faster than the real economy. If Piketty
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‘Would you force anyone else to behave like this?’ the promoters of the UK Jewish Film Festival asked the artistic director of London’s Tricycle Theatre. Indhu Rubasingham and her colleagues dodged and hummed. They didn’t like the question and did not want to reply to it. The silence was an answer in itself. Of course
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People talk about their commitment to equality and diversity so readily they must assume there is no conflict between the two. The phrase falls off the tongue as if it were an all-in-one package, and people can ‘celebrate diversity’ and support equal rights without a smidgeon of self-doubt. Until, that is, they have to make a
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Last week, Nick Cohen suggested that Lady Butler-Sloss was not the correct person to lead the child abuse enquiry. She has now resigned from her role. The Guardian says today that Lady Butler-Sloss cannot be the right person to lead the inquiry into alleged child abuse. ‘Not only was her brother, Lord Havers, attorney general
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Trying to count posts on the web is like trying to number grains of sand on a beach. In June 2012, a data management company called Domo attempted the fool’s errand nevertheless. It calculated that, every minute, the then 2.1 billion users uploaded 48 hours of YouTube video, shared 684,478 pieces of content on Facebook,
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Labour held a debate on Iain Duncan Smith’s stewardship of the welfare state today. Tory MPs backed their man, as did the Conservative journalists, who have told their readers that despite the many disappointments of the Cameron administration, Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms make the excruciating experience worthwhile. If Conservatives were sincere, they would want him
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Theresa May has suggested she may reignite plans for a ‘snoopers’ charter’, in order to provide intelligence services with greater surveillance powers. She has called for new powers in order to respond to the terror threat from British jihadists returning from the Middle East. In September 2012, Nick Cohen explained in The Spectator why a communications
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Ruth Richards, head of communications at Mind, has written a response to my criticism of the pointlessness of politically correct descriptions of the mentally ill and handicapped. As you would expect it is worth reading in full, but I am afraid it left me unconvinced. She thinks that the effort to reshape language is worthwhile,
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[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_19_June_2014.mp3″ title=”Paul Staines from Guido Fawkes and Evan Harris of Hacked Off debating Steve Coogan’s involvement with Index” startat=1508] Listen [/audioplayer]I have looked everywhere. I have Googled, and asked around. But I can find no evidence that Steve Coogan has ever taken the trouble to defend freedom of speech at home or abroad. I
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If you write about the mentally ill – people who suffer a short breakdown, maybe, or long periods of crippling stress – or say that those who must cope with autism, depression or schizophrenia all their lives are “handicapped”, you will be hammered. But not by the state and its supporters, or by members of
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In Brighton in 1996, an insurgent party held its first and as far as I can see only conference. Liberal journalists gazed on the gaudy spectacle with wonder and disdain. We could see that he Referendum Party was a sign of the coming age of the super-rich. It was created by Sir James Goldsmith, a
