The Left could take us out of Europe

~ Nick Cohen
 
Jeremy Corbyn Visits The North East

Spectator 24 February 2016

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 off, his weary expression and dispirited voice tell you he would rather be somewhere else. Tory MPs, so divided that it is hard to see how they can stay in the same party, unite in laughing at him.

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‘We told you so, you fucking fools’: the Euston Manifesto 10 years on

~ Nick Cohen

k2

Spectator 18 February 2016

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 across the left in 2006. They are everywhere now. They define the Labour Party and most of what passes for intellectual left-wing life in the 21st century.

 

To take the manifesto’s first statement of principle: the left should be ‘committed to democratic norms, procedures and structures’. An easy statement to agree with, I hear you say. Not so easy when the leader of the opposition, feted by his supporters as the most ‘left-wing’ in Labour’s history, will excuse dictatorial regimes or movements, however reactionary, if and only if, they are anti-West.
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Boris Johnson v Winston Churchill

~ Nick Cohen
LONDON, ENGLAND - FEBRUARY 21: Mayor of London Boris Johnson announces that he will be backing the 'Leave EU' campaign whilst speaking to the press outside his London home on February 21, 2016 in London, England. Mr Johnson announced his intentions for the EU referendum and to which campaign he will lend his support. (Photo by Chris Ratcliffe/Getty Images)Spectator February 2016

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 redux.

Both ignored party discipline and conventional routes of advancement, after all. Both were great company. Churchill stayed in the wilderness for years making a fortune from journalism, and so has Johnson. Churchill was a man of principle and so is…

Hold on. That doesn’t work.

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Growing up with communism

~ Nick Cohen

1238Review of David Aaronovitch’s Party Animals

The Observer January 2016

When the Soviet Union fell, my grandfather’s second wife did not share the wonderment at the passing of one of the most terrible regimes humanity has seen. She felt as if her life had been wasted, and hinted that her one consolation was that my grandfather had not lived to see it.

“How could you?” I thought as I listened. Continue reading →

Pay the bloody writer

~ Nick Cohen

Spectator January 2016

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 speech, and banged on about it to the point of tedium (and beyond) in these pages, I was happy to go to Oxford and bang on some more.  I had one small query.

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Don’t look to the Pope to defend your freedoms

~ Nick Cohen

5151Observer 9 January 2016

The only respectful way to mark the first anniversary of the Paris killings is to honour the memory of the dead by fighting for the Enlightenment values they lived by and died for. Whether we can is moot. Anglo-Saxon societies have enjoyed the privilege of Enlightenment freedoms for so long our defences have fallen into disrepair. We fool ourselves into thinking we are in a post-Enlightenment world. The old battles appear dead and gone, even though all around us murderous fanatics remind us that they intend to fight the war all over again.

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