Nick Cohen is the author of What's Left and You Can't Read This Book.
I don’t know if ‘Leave’ supporters will win. With the young abstaining and the old voting in a low-turnout referendum, it is just about possible that they could. But it is already dismally clear how they will react if they lose: they won’t accept the result. Nigel Farage was proud to admit that he would
The right, as well as the left, is home to the kind of flaming conspiracy nut who, in Bertie Wooster’s words, make ‘strong men climb trees and pull them up after them’. In another life, the activists for Vote Leave might have joined the thousands of hollowed-eyed onanists who post abuse under newspaper articles from
To say that the Labour party is in crisis because it is ‘too left-wing’ is to miss the point spectacularly. With eyes wide open, and all democratic procedures punctiliously observed, its members have chosen in their tens of thousands to endorse not ‘the left’, but an ugly simulacrum of left-wing politics. They have gone along
The trial of Antoine Deltour, Raphael Halet, and Edouard Perrin opens today in Luxembourg. Reporters should mob the courtroom. Camera crews should block the streets outside. I cannot think of a more important case, or one that reveals more clearly how tax havens punish those who reveal injustice rather than those in multinational businesses and
Boris Johnson is a former editor of this newspaper, and as such has the right to be treated with a courtesy Spectator journalists do not normally extend to politicians who do not enjoy his advantages. I am therefore writing with the caution of a lawyer and the deference of a palace flunkey when I say
No one does as much damage to a country as patriots who affect to love it the most. If you doubt me, ask yourself what is missing from the European debate. The virtue-signalling right flap their arms to semaphore their belief in restoring Britain’s greatness. Yet they do not answer an obvious question: if leaving the
When I was 18, I had my first tutorial on Anglo-Saxon history. I cannot remember the details but the don talked of the king of Mercia, or some such, marrying his daughter to the son of the king of Northumbria, or somewhere or other, because of the political advantages the union would bring the two
It takes an achingly long time for the British to see a lickspittle of mass murderers for what he is. For years, you jump up and down shouting ‘look at what he’s done!’ All but a handful ignore you. But he’s a character, the rest cry. He’s not like those poll-driven, focus-group–tested on-message politicians, who speak
I’ve always admired the liberal Muslims in the Quilliam Foundation. It is hard to take accusations of betrayal from your own community. Harder still to keep fighting when the thought feeling keeps nagging away that out there, somewhere, there are Islamists who might do you real harm. But Quilliam keeps fighting. To mark the launch
I accept it may take an effort to imagine Charles Moore dressed in a recyclable hemp skirt and organic cotton kimono, his body adorned with the bangles, tattoos and piercings of a genderqueer National Union of Students diversity officer. But you should try. No, really, you should. Students are not the only ones who lock
Europe has opened up an unbridgeable chasm in the Conservative party. Labour remains, near as dammit, united. On the EU referendum, an opposition accustomed to defeat has a rare chance of victory. Yet when Jeremy Corbyn makes the case for staying in he speaks without conviction. Like a man called into work on his day
Europe has opened up an unbridgeable chasm in the Conservative party. Labour remains, near as dammit, united. On the EU referendum, an opposition accustomed to defeat has a rare chance of victory. Yet when Jeremy Corbyn makes the case for staying in he speaks without conviction. Like a man called into work on his day
Rather rashly, Boris Johnson published The Churchill factor: How one man made history last year. 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 Euston Manifesto appears a noble failure. It was clear in 2006 that the attempt to revive left-wing support for internationalism, democracy and universal human rights did not have a strong chance of success. Looking back a decade on, it seems doomed from the start. The tyrannical habits of mind it condemned were breaking out
If a dirty mind is a perpetual feast, then a filthy mind is an open sewer. You see where the manure is coming from. More to the point, you know where it is going. When Galloway faced a challenge for the Bradford West seat from the Labour candidate, Naz Shah, he thought the best way
When Cecil Rhodes was drawing up his will his final dream was of British world domination. He pledged funds for ‘To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system
It should be easy to admire the BBC’s handling of the Savile scandal. Two of its journalists, Liz MacKean and Meirion Jones, broke the story. Panorama then ran a devastating account of the corporation’s failings which is still worth watching online. This morning the Today programme properly led with the leak of Dame Janet Smith’s
A few months ago, one of the organisers of the Oxford Literary Festival contacted me. Hi Nick I may be putting on a free speech event at Oxford Lit Festival 2-10 April 2016 and wondered if you’d be willing to take part? It’s the usual festival deal. As I have written a book on free
Two points stand out from Pat McFadden’s career-killing question to David Cameron. ‘May I ask the prime minister to reject the view that sees terrorist acts as always being a response or a reaction to what we in the West do? Does he agree that such an approach risks infantilising the terrorists and treating them
The Spectator‘s most read article of 2015 was Nick Cohen’s piece about Margot Wallström – the Swedish foreign minister who stood up against Saudi Arabi’s subjugation of women. He wrote it in March; it was still in our top ten most read yesterday. Every so often, new groups of people (mainly Facebook communities) keep discovering and sharing
