Nick Cohen: Writing from London

A quibbling critic ought to pick the BBC’s Sherlock apart. Admirers of Arthur Conan Doyle would expect nothing less than a fanatical concentration on minute flaws, after all. “The little things are infinitely the most important,” says Holmes in A Case of Identity. His 21st-century successor accepted loose ends and unexplained solutions with a nonchalance [...]

From Standpoint. Contemplating with his customary scorn the artists who had embraced the Russian Revolution, Leon Trotsky wondered what it would take to break their attachment to a cause that would eventually murder many of them — and kill Trotsky too, although he was yet to know it. “As regards a fellow-traveller,” he said, “the [...]

In the Observer today I look at the media’s hatred of Tony Blair, which is building up in the advance of the release of his autobiography. The most distasteful manifestation of the mania is the conspiracy theory that Blair covered up the “murder” of David Kelly and maybe…. These ravings are not only coming from [...]

‘Who killed David Kelly?” To the uninitiated looking for a thrill this silly season, the answer is clear. In the Mirror and the Mail, high-pitched voices from left and right say that at the very least his death was covered up by Tony Blair, a man they loathe so fervently they cannot even praise him [...]

‘Who killed David Kelly?” To the uninitiated looking for a thrill this silly season, the answer is clear. In the Mirror and the Mail, high-pitched voices from left and right say that at the very least his death was covered up by Tony Blair, a man they loathe so fervently they cannot even praise him [...]

To my mind it is obvious that Labour is in a great deal of trouble, and that the only candidate who can get them out of it is David Miliband. More than half of the electorate voted for the Conservatives and Liberals in the 2010 election. To win some of them back Labour is going [...]

To my mind, the silliest headline of the 2000s appeared in the Times of 5 May 2006. Some academic had decided that what job you had, how much money you earned and who your parents were did not matter a damn in go-ahead Britain. Snobbery was dead. Meritocracy was here to stay. The Times ran [...]

Reporters do not always treat subs well. On occasion, when pushed beyond endurance by the cutting of our best lines, or a puritan purge of all our gags, we tell the old joke about the plane carrying a sub and a reporter crashing in the Sahara. For three days they walk through the burning heat [...]

Jews get the blame in every great crisis, and it was inevitable that conspiracy theorists would blame them for the foreign policy crisis of the early 21st century. What distinguishes our time, however, is that elements within western liberalism now adopt the position once associated with European reaction. I noticed that there was much grumbling [...]