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There has been an edgy note in the voice of respectable opinion for a good month now. Men of moderate temperament are struggling to handle the uncomfortable thought that Blairism [...]

This is the story of two men from the local press. The first, Don Hale, the former editor of the Matlock Mercury, could soon defy precedent and become the most [...]

The accusation is as predictable as late trains. You are arguing in a pub, or addressing a smaller audience on the wee-small-hours show on Radio 5. The chat may be [...]

In our search for the New Statesman's Man of the Year, we have been guided, as so often before, by the work of Hippolyte Taine. Every epoch, the philosopher wrote [...]

The citizens of banana republics can guess their masters' plans when soldiers in black leather storm the radio stations and broadcast martial music. The British learn that their freedoms are [...]

In the introduction to The Struggle for Mastery in Europe, 1848-1918, A J P Taylor wrote that the diplomats of the great powers were generally honest by their own standards. [...]

The government's concern for human rights is bogus In No One Left To Lie To, an essential study of the corruption of Bill Clinton's administration, Christopher Hitchens quotes two conservative [...]

Our Future King: Prince Charles at 70by Robert JobsonJohn Blake, 20 [pounds sterling], pp. 320Republicans hate to admit it, but the stability brought by the long reign of that most [...]

Being a Jew on the Corbyn left is soul-crushing. In the name of the cause, you must excuse racism in all but its extreme forms. The presence of a real [...]

In 1989, the year Soviet communism collapsed, John O'Sullivan, Margaret Thatcher's former speechwriter, gave the world O'Sullivan's First Law of Politics. 'All organisations that are not actually right wing,' he [...]

At the start of the 21st century, no one felt the need to reach for studies of 'third-period' communism to understand British and American politics. By 2016, I would say [...]

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, [...]

Quality journalism is in crisis. The media's obsession with personalities, opinion, light features and lifestyle pieces is killing the art of reporting Just after the general election Peter Horrocks, then [...]

Marxists have always carried the seeds of melancholia within them. If you believed that scientific laws would deliver the right verdict, you are apt to become disconsolate when history, that [...]

Marxists have always carried the seeds of melancholia within them. If you believed that scientific laws would deliver the right verdict, you are apt to become disconsolate when history, that [...]

'Tory, Tory, Tory. You're a Tory.' The level of hatred directed by the Corbyn left at Labour people who have fought Tories all their lives is as menacing as it [...]

'Let me tell you about the very rich,' said F. Scott Fitzgerald. 'They are different from you and me.' Indeed they are. They can afford to live in London. Just [...]

Enough has been written about a Conservative government that knows its electoral success depends on Britain remaining a property-owning democracy, yet offers nothing beyond token gestures to stop the young [...]

With the possible, although far from certain, exception of the men and women who hire me, it is fair to say that Britain's editors have a death wish. They suppress [...]

Tony Blair is waging a one-man war, ignoring both the cabinet and the Foreign Office in order to prove his unflagging support for George Bush. The wartime fad from America [...]

Anti-terrorist laws nearly always scoop up the innocent and the harmless. Nick Cohen argues that there are simpler ways to improve our security Tony Blair grasped the hand of Rudy [...]

Chaucer, Jane Austen, Martin Amis: all show capitalists as greedy and wicked. Aggrieved business leaders want a rewrite. Nick Cohen is unsympathetic Chief Executive Officers can have it all: the [...]

Nick Cohen discovers a little-known pamphlet published by Jessica Mitford in 1956 and finds a little updating helps him understand politicians today Nancy Mitford's Noblesse Oblige made her better, if [...]

The British National Party is delighted with the soft coverage it is getting from programmes such as Today and Newsnight. And no wonder, says Nick Cohen European fascism began on [...]

Privatisation is supposed to leave companies to take the risk of things going wrong. In practice, that never actually happens. The most numerically challenged child can see in a moment [...]

The more the Dimblebys and Paxmans appeared, the more the ratings fell. Are journalists now as divorced from reality as politicians? Ten days after an election that saw cynicism confirmed [...]

The leaders left the Citadel to meet the 'real' people. But the people aren't interested: they don't even want to storm the Citadel We scramble to find the language to [...]

Nick Cohen found himself unable to agree with Ann Widdecombe on the difference between a prison and a reception centre. He was punished swiftly and severely Nothing lifts my dejected [...]

Nick Cohen argues that opinion polls, which have a dismal record in predicting election results, are just another way of keeping the proles in their place The Sun can fix [...]

For years, Blair has worried only about losing support from the right. Use this election to make him worry about the left The drums are calling the anti-Tory tribe to [...]

No wonder Britain's immigration policies shock the rest of Europe: Jack Straw won't even spend special EU money to help asylum-seekers Britain won't help asylum-seekers at any price. Neither love [...]

As the World Trade Organisation meets in Geneva, Nick Cohen reveals plans to sell off schools, hospitals and other 'services' to the highest bidder Europe is a mighty cause of [...]

... but they'd have been there for Gore, too. Nick Cohen on the energy conglomerate that just loves politicians The contest for the title 'The World's Worst Corporation' is stiff, [...]

Will Tony Blair resist attempts to put Yorkshire in the front line of a new US defence system? Or will it be left to the locals? Alan Wilson, the chief [...]

Voter turnout is at an all-time low, but don't blame it on apathy. The electorate has turned cynical, and that is quite a different matter. The great conflict of the [...]

Freedom of information? Ministers will go to any lengths even to avoid answering MPs' questions The 'thank you for voting Labour' posters currently smiling down on bleak high streets are [...]

Nick Cohen argues that politicians and artists have drained Nazi genocide of meaning and turned it into a banal cause celebre On 27 January 2001, the 56th anniversary of the [...]

From the PM downwards, this is a government dominated by the legal profession. So why is it so keen to attack ancient liberties In Henry VI, Part Two, Shakespeare shows [...]

You may think the Communist Party and its heirs of no importance. But their wealth could still have a profound political influence. I doubt if one person in 100,000 has [...]

Pat Pottle, one of the duo who sprang the Soviet spy George Blake from prison, died last weekend. Nick Cohen recalls his extraordinary story At about six o'clock on Saturday [...]

If you like a few pints in the evening, beware of the urine test when you clock on next morning, advises I magine you are a prison officer. It is [...]

What real influence does the voice of the centre left and Labour's favourite think-tank wield? Last year, Matthew Taylor, a former assistant general secretary of the Labour Party, wrote of [...]

Labour is too eager to prostrate itself before the throne. Nick Cohen on why Britain will never be a true democracy while a monarch reigns THE REPUBLIC OF BRITAIN: 1760 [...]

ALL THE KING'S MEN Robert Penn Warren Prion, 438pp, £7.99 To describe All the King's Men as 'a great political novel' is as condescending as calling Moby Dick 'a great [...]

A bitterly fought case in Cambridge highlights how, in the war against drugs, even middle-class charity workers become potential criminals. Cambridge has inspired a superfluity of similes, but, to the [...]

Why did Customs mess up the biggest British drugs prosecution ever? And why isn't anyone being hung out to dry as a result? Almost exactly a year ago, Operation Stealer, [...]

Behind the Dover stowaway deaths lies a booming business, created by western politicians as surely as bootlegging was created by Prohibition. Journalists are meant to ask five questions: Who? What? [...]

Direct election of mayors sounds a good idea. Not so, argues Nick Cohen, who detects the start of a new era of council secrecy and unaccountability The great local government [...]

Nick Cohen finds that top journalists, so keen to demand that others reveal their earnings, like to keep quiet about their own £200,000-plus salaries Paul Dacre, the editor of the [...]