Nick Cohen is the author of What's Left and You Can't Read This Book.
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The American journalist Michael Weiss wrote recently, “Tony Blair can’t be a war criminal. If he were, George Galloway would support him.” The joke works on the assumption that the backers of despots in the West are always from the Dostoevskian dregs of extremist politics: wild and frothing men, far from the polite and sensible
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Dear Mr CTB, We often say that the best advice a solicitor can give a client is to tell them when to back off from a confrontation. The time has come to give it to you. You must know that your cause is hopeless, and our so-called privacy injunction a laughing stock. Your name is
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Bernard-Henri Levy begins his polemic on the alleged rape of a hotel chambermaid by Dominique Strauss-Kahn, with a priceless example of what a better French philosopher called “bad faith”. ‘I do not know what actually happened Saturday, the day before yesterday, in the room of the now famous Hotel Sofitel in New York. I do
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Liberal Democrat fury at the behaviour of the prime minister is all over this morning’s papers. They are not just blustering because they lost the referendum – although, obviously, there is an element of that. They are also genuinely outraged that Cameron used the fact that Clegg compromised to form the coalition that put Cameron
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I have a piece in Time on why British republicans are the true patriots. Here’s a taster: “If you doubt the patriotism of British republicanism, consider trying to explain to an American why the U.S. should import the British constitution. ‘You must make someone President for life,’ you begin. ‘It might as well be Barack
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I have a piece in the Norwegian daily VG about how the Libyan war is destroying old certainties. I point out that although: “Den europeiske liberale middelklassens illusjoner ødelegges av krigen i Libya. Tenk på hvordan deres ulike talsmenn og –kvinner snakket om internasjonal politick i tv-studioer i Oslo eller London for få måneder siden.
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One should never be too prissy about political campaigns. But even when the usual excuses about the “rough and tumble of politics” have been trotted out, the argument about AV has been so dire it would have embarrassed an unusually truculent toddler. David Cameron elevated Sayeeda Warsi to the peerage and gave her in a
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Being the second in an occasional series. Part one is available here. Let me see if I can get this straight. The British Conservative Party has not won a general election since 1992, in part because the voters did not trust it to run the NHS. Ever since David Cameron became leader, the Tories have
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I worry that Coffee House sometimes fails to enrage readers sufficiently, so let me run a scenario past you, suggested to me by Rafael Behr, the Observer’s brilliant leader writer. The AV referendum is going to be the oddest vote. Turnout will be low, but how low will depend on where you live. Scotland, Northern
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For as long as I can remember Billy Bragg has been arguing for tactical voting. He lives in some splendour in Dorset, and wants to drive the Tories out of the county by any means necessary. In 2005, although he was a Labour supporter, and on many issues was well to Left of Labour, he
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Writing in today’s Guardian about the weekend protests, my colleague Jackie Ashley makes a half-true argument. ‘Miliband [cannot] be blamed for the embarrassing juxtaposition of his words at the Hyde Park rally and the actions of a group of anarchists in Oxford Street as they attacked the police. The Labour leader is no more responsible
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMnAmRa4NYw If we are going to avoid a clash of civilisations, we are going to need many more like the Pakistani actress Veena Malik. Watch her take on a mullah, who is trying to accuse her of immoral behaviour. This is no small accusation in Pakistan where Islamist death squads and their collaborators in the
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I am writing a book about threats to freedom of speech – real threats that is – and wonder if I should include a chapter on political correctness. I find it a hard question. In many ways, political correctness has improved British manners. That people no longer screech about the niggers and the pakis and
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A few weeks ago, the Prime Minister promised a muscular liberalism that would take on the Islamist extremist groups Jack Straw, Ken Livingstone, John Denham and other frightened or simply ugly and unprincipled Labour politicians had funded. “Let’s properly judge these organisations: Do they believe in universal human rights – including for women and people
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Writing yesterday my esteemed colleague James Forsyth said that for want of a better alternative Jeremy Hunt was the Tory Party’s coming man. I hate disagree with James, but I would put more money on Colonel Gaddafi making it through the next 12 months than the Conservatives’ “rising star”. Every newspaper group with the exception
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The London School of Economics once had a global reputation. The Libyan revolution wiped it away as easily as if it was mist on a window. I cannot find precedent for the collapse in liberal and academic standards Howard Davies, the LSE’s director, presided over. The Cambridge spies met at Cambridge University, as their
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I’ve a piece in Standpoint about The Killing, one of the most interesting dramas on television. It’s not British, alas, and provides another reason for the controllers of British television to stop patting themselves on the back and saying “we make the best television in the world”. But nor, like so much of the best
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Peter Mandelson’s publishers have sent me extracts from the updated paperback edition of his memoirs, The Third Man, which is out on 3 March. Here are his thoughts on Ed Miliband’s victory over David. ‘It was a photo finish [and] I felt terrible for David. I felt even more worried for the party. This was
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I don’t understand you, really I don’t. The immediate cause of my bewilderment was a piece on this site, yesterday by Matthew Hancock MP, attacking Ed Balls. In normal circumstances, I would have offered to hold his coat, but Hancock wrote: ‘Balls takes positions he knows not to be true, like the ridiculous claim that
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I once vowed never again to mock celebrities who endorse political campaigns as if they were advertising two-for-the-price-of-one offers in supermarkets. But today’s announcement that the Yes to AV campaign has recruited Helena Bonham Carter and Colin Firth is testing my resolve. It is not that I believe that celebrities should keep away from politics.
