Nick Cohen is the author of What's Left and You Can't Read This Book.
In the middle of a national crisis, Britain has become a parliamentary democracy without a parliament. The police now have extraordinary powers to fine and arrest those who break the lockdown. Do I hear you say that these are necessary powers for a time of pandemic? Maybe they are. But we have no parliament to
If Brexit did not do it, the panic buying has trampled to death national myths patriots once cherished. We now see that ‘quintessentially English’ does not now mean a reserved character with a stiff upper lip joining an orderly queue. But a demonically possessed shopper lunging towards the last four-pack of loo roll. Conservatives can
I do not know enough to comment on the merits of the Labour party’s action against Trevor Phillips. But I know what the far left looks like when it is building a cover story to hide its wickedness, and everyone else looking at the Phillips case should know it too. In normal circumstances, you would
Boris Johnson’s handsome election victory was only three months ago, but already it feels like a relic from another age. The coronavirus requires him to be everything he is not: serious, attentive to detail and respectful of expertise and public servants. He may not be ‘yesterday’s man’, because no replacement is in sight. But he
Keir Starmer knows. He’s not saying anything, not letting one word of criticism of the Corbyn regime escape his lips, but he knows better than the journalists who cover politics, better than you, me or anyone who hasn’t lived in Labour for the past five years, the depth of the disgrace of the British left.
Keir Starmer knows. He’s not saying anything, not letting one word of criticism of the Corbyn regime escape his lips, but he knows better than the journalists who cover politics, better than you, me or anyone who hasn’t lived in Labour for the past five years, the depth of the disgrace of the British left.
If you want to see why Britain’s future will be so decrepit, look at the dramas on ITV. Unlike the BBC or Channel 4, ITV receives no state protection. It must compete in the market, and is targeting the most powerful audience in the country: the elderly. ITV has old soap operas: Coronation Street (first
The persecution complex of the British left is both a psychological reality and the outcome of a cynical strategy. No one can doubt that the left feels victimised. But left-wing politicians have an interest in pretending that dark forces predetermine its defeat. If they are to keep their supporters in line, they can never take
Boris Johnson is the first party leader of the media age. Winston Churchill and Michael Foot wrote extensively. But Johnson is a journalist. Before he went into politics, producing Tory commentary and editing this magazine were the achievements that defined him. And yet no modern prime minister has shown a greater determination to limit media
For those who claimed Boris Johnson would be Donald Trump’s poodle, the past month has been corrective. Far from bowing before American power, he is defying it. Johnson is considering rejecting America’s demand to ban Huawei from supplying parts of a new UK 5G network. His government is willing to override Trump’s objections and ensure
As Soviet communism fell in 1989, the German poet Hans Magnus Enzensberger wrote a defence of the art of possible that deserves to endure. Terrible regimes aren’t always toppled by romantic revolutionaries, who reject everything they stand for, he wrote in The Heroes of the Retreat. ‘In the past few decades, a more significant protagonist
The Labour left that has dominated radical culture since 2015 appears to have had a stroke. Its candidates for the Labour leadership seem paralysed. The ‘journalists’ who have sold their souls and become propagandists don’t know what to say. Supporters of the Keir Starmer and Jess Phillips campaigns believe the machine will crank up again
The far left controls the Labour bureaucracy, its National Executive Committee, its policy making, manifesto writing, many of its constituency parties, and its affiliated unions – either directly in the case of Unite, or indirectly by terrifying their leaders into complicit silence, as in the case of Unison, If it adds the deputy leadership to
The reason Jeremy Corbyn is not preparing to lead the first majority Labour government since 2010 is Jeremy Corbyn. The Labour leader is proving the falseness of the cliché that ‘oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them’. Unless enough people are convinced of an opposition’s competence and decency it will not take power, even when
This election is a war between disgust and fear: disgust at the miserable inadequates who represent ‘your side’; fear of what your enemies may do to you. It looks as if fear is winning. No country can fight two extremist movements at once. Fear of one side drives voters into the arms of the other,
An allegedly racist party protesting its innocence has many strategies open to it. The best is to admit its guilt and reform. Labour cannot because Labour’s leader and his supporters are so contaminated by racial prejudice they lack the moral capacity to change, or even admit to themselves the need to change. Labour might try
At times, it can be hard to avoid the preachy style of reviewing that talks to readers in the tone of a teacher ordering you to eat your greens. This, I’m afraid, is one of them. If you know what’s good for you, watch Spotlight on the Troubles: A Secret History on BBC iPlayer and
Anyone who doubts that the far left is more interested in winning the faction fight within the Labour party than a general election, should look at how it has treated Sally Gimson, the Labour candidate in Bassetlaw. At least she was the Labour candidate until yesterday when Jon Lansman, a director of Momentum (it is
Last night’s report in the Financial Times that Nigel Farage is considering a pact with Boris Johnson has terrified what remains of the ‘Remain’ movement. Their statisticians believe it could guarantee a Tory majority, and maybe a huge majority. The smart thing to say about this election is that nobody knows anything and any outcome
Allow me to introduce Dominic Slack-Oxley. Never heard of him, I hear you cry. Oh but you have. You hear from him every time you pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV news. Slack-Oxley is everywhere. More than Facebook or Vladimir Putin, he is the most reliable source of fake news in Britain.
