Nick Cohen

Sympathetic journalists covering the Remain movement are stuck by how far away it is from the ugliness of politics. Its activists are, to use a word that damns with faint praise, ‘nice’. It is better to be nice than vicious, of course. It is better to be nice than mendacious and unscrupulous and so criminally

In a judgment that will ring down the centuries, the Supreme Court unanimously finds that a Conservative prime minister had unlawfully suspended Parliament, and press ganged the Queen into being his accomplice. A Conservative prime minister, I should emphasise: the leader of a party that once lectured us on the need to defend the British

Boris Johnson is using the conventions of British public life to destroy the British constitution. He is relying on the old understanding that good chaps don’t ‘go too far’ while ‘going all the way’ himself. He is counting on the judges being frightened of challenging him, while showing no fear as he tramps over and

Both main British parties are now characterised by intolerance of dissent, leader worship and racism. You can take a historical view and see the rise of extremism as a reaction to the great crash of 2008 and the longest period of wage stagnation since the Napoleonic wars – a country that suffers the economics of the

As a rule, it is naïve to hope that the thuggery of our masters will rebound and the wicked will suffer for their misdeeds. The good don’t end happily and the bad unhappily in modern Westminster. Still, as the Brexit crisis intensifies I am happy to tell you there are a few hopeful signs that

What George Orwell said of left-wing intellectuals now applies to Boris Johnson and his ministers: so much of what they propose is a ‘playing with fire by people who don’t even know that fire is hot’. They may suspend Parliament and crash us out of the EU on 31 October or crash us out in

If Labour were serious about stopping the most right-wing Conservative government within living memory, it would revolutionise its approach to politics. Clearly, it would have to remove Jeremy Corbyn as leader. Ideally, Corbyn would remove himself. He would not allow the struggle to force him out to waste precious time. He would look at his leadership

Boris Johnson is taking over the Conservative party like a gangster taking over a crime syndicate. Don’t let ideological labels mystify you. “Remainer,” “Leaver”,” “no dealer” – these are just words to confuse the credulous and stop them seeing their country clearly. Power is the only word that need concern you. Power, rather than ideology,

Germany’s Die Welt asked me to tell its readers how on earth someone like Boris Johnson could become prime minister. I gave it my best shot. Whatever else happens to Germany, I cannot imagine a German Boris Johnson coming to power. To assemble such a creature, you would have to create conservative German whose parents

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

Modern politicians are like drug dealers intent on keeping their clients’ hooked. They sell fixes to their core voters: upping the strength and deepening the addiction. The punters know at some level they are being played. But a temporary high is better than no high, and infinitely preferable to the sweats and shakes the cold

Boris Johnson seems the opposite of Theresa May. The worst thing she ever did was run through a wheat field. The worst thing he ever did remains open to debate. But dark suspicious prompted Charles Moore, whom older readers will remember as a defender of family values, to ask: ‘Does it matter if our future

Rather rashly, Boris Johnson published The Churchill factor: How one man made history in 2015. It was without historical merit, or intellectual insight, but Johnson did not intend readers to learn about Churchill. The biography was not a Churchill biography but a Johnson campaign biography, where we were invited to see our  hero as Winston

The remain campaign’s political dilemma looks insoluble. Perhaps I am being overly pessimistic – gloom is my default state –  but it is certainly formidable because it requires remainers to simultaneously support and oppose Jeremy Corbyn. I can make the people who spell it out sound silly. I shouldn’t because some of the brightest and

Protestors on the anti-Brexit marches have sensed an eerie absence. ‘What is it?’ I thought back in March as I stood on a soapbox to address an audience so jammed by the weight of numbers on Park Lane that it could not escape. Then it hit me. ‘What the hell have they done with the

When people challenge my opinions I shrug, said Vladimir Nabokov. When people challenge my facts, I reach for my dictionary. Brendan O’Neill, formerly of the Revolutionary Communist Party and Living Marxism, now of Spiked, has had me reaching for mine. He accuses me of lying, a charge which might send a less liberal journalist than

Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party pretends to stand for the traditional values of old England: Parliamentary sovereignty, patriotism and decency. However little the uninitiated thought of Farage, they would expect his candidates to condemn the IRA murdering children in Warrington and to take a strong line against child pornography. Not so. Or rather, not always. Claire Fox (top

Who will fight the British far right? The centre right, the left, the liberals? The European elections are giving Nigel Farage the chance to push for a catastrophic Brexit, and build a formidable and ugly nationalist movement. Yet allegedly serious politicians, who have a duty to oppose him, forget the national interest and their own