Nick Cohen 
The racism of the respectable
To be a racist in Britain, you do not need to cover yourself in tattoos and join a neo-Nazi party. You can wear well-made shirts, open at the neck, appreciate… Continue reading
105 Comments
Tories, oppose family values
For almost a decade now, what social conservatives say and the evidence in front of our eyes has been diverging with remarkable speed. According to the received wisdom, the permissive… Continue reading
27 Comments
Westminster’s hollow men
In my Observer column today I say that a judicial review into the banking scandal would have achieved little unless the judge could have persuaded the politicians to change the… Continue reading
6 Comments
Crony Conservatism
The fundamental division in modern politics is between corporatists and believers in free markets. So what, you might say, that has been a fundamental division for quite a while. This… Continue reading
8 Comments
Whatever happened to freedom of speech?
The issues raised by the Twitter Joke case have been gone over so thoroughly that, as is so often in public debate, only the obvious question remains undiscussed and unanswered:… Continue reading
18 Comments
The war against the young
At the time of the student protests, I laid out in the Observer the demographic facts that push unscrupulous politicians into picking on the young. Their political vulnerability is the… Continue reading
14 Comments
Jimmy’s “Scam”
Satirists are like pop stars in two respects. They earn extraordinary amounts of money, and the public assumes that they are left wing. You do not need to be a… Continue reading
25 Comments
Why are the unions frightened?
Labour has only ever won a general election from the autumn of 1974 onwards when its leader has been called &”Tony Blair”. Four other leaders tried, but they were not… Continue reading
17 Comments
Why the Jubilee Coverage was so bad
One of my objections to monarchy is that it is a vulgar institution that encourages verbosity, prurience, sycophancy and banality. I was not therefore surprised that the BBC’s jubilee coverage… Continue reading
60 Comments
A diplomatic racket
In my Observer column on Sunday I mentioned in passing that in a crisis, elites have to be able to show that they are sharing the plight of the masses.… Continue reading
12 Comments
Take the mickey back
Our beliefs are like our families. Some we live with every day. Others are distant relations we rarely see but still think of as part of our clan in a… Continue reading
24 CommentsDon’t trust the West
A few days ago, I attended the Oslo Freedom Forum, where dissidents and human rights campaigners gather to exchange ideas. I feared the mood was a little too optimistic, and… Continue reading
8 Comments
Beware the ferret-faced heresy hunters
I fell in with bad company while I was on a story in Oslo last week: American conservative journalists. I am glad to say confirmed the public’s stereotype of reporters… Continue reading
19 Comments
‘It’s the newspapers I can’t stand’
In Tom Stoppard’s Night and Day, Milne, an idealistic journalist, describes the limitations of newspapers, and then gives the best argument for press freedom I know of. ‘You don’t have… Continue reading
12 Comments
Rupert Murdoch and the revival of the Labour Party
Last year I wrote that the Leveson inquiry would suit Jeremy Hunt rather well. He had appointed Lord Justice Leveson, a judge with little previous experience of media law to… Continue reading
24 Comments
Gunter Grass: the tin drum and the tin ear
This morning’s editorial in Israel’s left-wing Haaretz newspaper noted a double standard that was also a bad joke. Israel’s Interior Minister’s had declared, ‘If Gunter Grass wants to continue to… Continue reading
80 Comments
The tweet police
Writing with the optimism of a high-Victorian liberal, John Stuart Mill said that the only legitimate restriction on freedom of speech was to stop the direct incitement to a crime.… Continue reading
73 Comments
Will Osborne close the ‘Livingstone Loophole’?
When I spoke to the tax justice campaigner Richard Murphy about Ken Livingstone’s tax avoidance, he said that the practice of individuals pretending that they were companies caused ‘a massive… Continue reading
17 Comments
The spectre of militant secularism
At the weekend, I was honoured to award the Secularist of the Year prize to Peter Tatchell on behalf of the National Secular Society. From the stage, I looked across… Continue reading
44 CommentsCan we talk about this?
Can actors at the National Theatre quote Christopher Hitchens’ destruction of Shirley Williams for her failure to defend freedom of speech against suicide murderers on Question Time, while all the… Continue reading
11 Commentsarticles
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Leveson: Don’t let the state frighten you
If David Cameron had
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Christopher Hitchens’s lefty publisher begged from him – and then betrayed him
Before the crash of 2007,
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'Murdoch betrays everyone in the end'
My guard goes up when
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Export-only justice
In the last few years
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Whose freedom? Whose press?
A love for freedom of
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Nowhere to hide
Ever since the millennium, I
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Censorship Olympics
The guards would not let
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Web of tyrants
The internet can promote freedom
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Nick Cohen
I looked at it and
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Liberal England dies again
The Lib Dems’ troubles are
