The folly of pandering to financial services

Of all those writers who stand on the Left and (not but) favour the foreign-policy approach of Tony Blair, Nick Cohen is one whose political roots lie most obviously in the traditions of British radicalism. During the long political dominance of Blairism, he was scornful of the notions of labour-market flexibility and the knowledge economy. His aversion to the taste of New Labour for big business is strong, and he writes angrily of the befuddlement of policymakers before mammon.

The collapse of the Western banking system and the discrediting of "light-touch" financial regulation ought to have vindicated Cohen's critiques. Yet a concatenation of Cohen-bashers will have none of it. The reason is not hard to discern. Two years ago, Cohen wrote a book called What's Left?: How Liberals Lost Their Way.

It described the corruption of progressive ideals by those who espoused them. The last century saw immense social advances, material progress and the removal of discrimination. Professed liberals and radicals appeared less interested in consolidating those gains, however, than in attacking the constitutional societies in which they had been achieved.

Anger at the betrayal of progressive principles runs through Cohen’s work

The argument proved unpopular with its targets. Their typical complaint ran that Cohen's criticisms were about fringe elements. It was always someone else. But it was not someone else. Cohen had exposed a continuum of supposedly left-wing alliances ranging from realpolitik to reaction - and at the extreme, a perverse notion of anti-imperialism that regarded Islamist terror as a cry of the oppressed, because it was directed against the United States.

His anger at such a betrayal of progressive principles runs through his collection of journalism Waiting for the Etonians (Fourth Estate, £12.99). And the response of reviewers in the liberal and left-wing press is: hauteur.

"The hole in the centre of this scrapbook is left by grown-up economics," sniffs Fred Inglis in the Independent. "In place of a proper analysis of contemporary politics and world events, he gives us fantasy fascists and New Nazis to boo and hiss at," harrumphs Brendan O'Neill in the New Statesman. (O'Neill formerly worked on LM magazine, a title that was forced to close after it libelled ITN journalists who had exposed inhuman conditions at the