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1 week ago | 
nickcohen.substack.com | Nick Cohen
If, like me, you lived through Brexit, Trump Mark I, and Truss, and want to stop the radical right returning under Nigel Farage, you have every right to be dispirited. In Canada and Australia, the centre-left hammered their Trump-like opponents. But in Britain Keir Starmer did not even put up a fight. What on earth was he thinking? Why does he neglect the centre-left and embark on a futile attempt to appease the unappeasable?
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1 week ago | 
nickcohen.substack.com | Nick Cohen
If Doctor Who appeared in his TARDIS and offered to take you back to any year in British history since Salisbury beat Gladstone in the general election of 1886, the odds are you would land in a Britain with the Conservative party in control.
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1 week ago | 
nickcohen.substack.com | Nick Cohen
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1 week ago | 
nickcohen.substack.com | Nick Cohen
Here are two facts about modern Britain which barely impinge on what passes for the national “debate” in politics and the media. First, Donald Trump is hugely unpopular. Only about 16% of people in the UK approve of him. Here as in every other European country the belief that the United States is a force for good in the world is collapsing. This isn’t a question of left versus right or woke verses reactionaries.
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1 week ago | 
nickcohen.substack.com | Nick Cohen
At the weekend I wrote of my suspicion of journalists who raved about Trump’s brief meeting with Zelensky at the funeral of Pope Francis. I know from experience that the impression of reporters as hard-bitten hacks is not always as true as it should be. Many yearn for fantasies to come true with the ardour of the most credulous members of the public – more so on occasion, because fantasies make the best stories.
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2 weeks ago | 
nickcohen.substack.com | Nick Cohen
I try to keep posts about the West’s crisis free to read so that they can receive a wide audience. But if you can afford to, please consider supporting my journalism by becoming a paid subscriber. Your support is greatly appreciated. There are four lessons worth learning from the Canadian election. The first which always needs emphasising is:The Canadian election warned us yet again of the folly of rationalising autocratic bullies.
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2 weeks ago | 
nickcohen.substack.com | Nick Cohen
Vicious movements do not come from nowhere. It was not the case that one minute all was well on the Western right and the next it was overwhelmed by a contempt for democracy and the rule of law. Nor should we fall for the Great Man Theory of History, or in our case the Great Bad Man Theory of History. Whatever power Donald Trump possesses, and however servile the personality cult that surrounds him, he did not destroy the old world on his own.
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2 weeks ago | 
nickcohen.substack.com | Nick Cohen
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2 weeks ago | 
nickcohen.substack.com | Nick Cohen
I try to keep posts about our crisis free to read so that they can receive a wide audience. But, if you can afford to, please consider supporting my journalism by becoming a paid subscriber. If you want to know what it was like to be a flunkey at the court of an absolute monarch, or to be one of the hangers-on who surrounded every dictator and bully in history, look at this morning’s news sites.
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2 weeks ago | 
nickcohen.substack.com | Nick Cohen
If a President Kamala Harris or President Bernie Saunders had crashed the markets on an arbitrary and oppressive whim, America’s libertarian movement and the billionaires who support it would be screaming their protests from the rooftops. But because it is Donald Trump who is destroying trillions of dollars of wealth, they stay silent. They bite their tongues because they sold their souls to the far-right years ago. Now they are paying the price – and so are the rest of us.