Nick Cohen's discomfort in using terms relating to the Left is entirely justified. The mentality he describes should not be regarded as left. He is closer to the mark when he speaks of the left 'shading' into the Right. I don't think politics can be properly understood without the conceptual tool 'pseudo-left'. This should be widely popularised and then maybe a genuine left, that decries all imperialism, and supports democratic struggle, can be revived.

Bloody hell, what a boring read. Doubt it would appeal to anyone other than a few Guardian readers. Do you make a decent living from this twaddle, Nick? I mean, seriously? People pay you for this?

This is what Jeremy Corbyn said in the Queens Speech on foreign policy; http://jeremycorbyn.org.uk/articles/queens-speech-britain-in-the-world/ . So what different to the monster Nicj Cohen portrays him as. I have always rated Nick Cohen as a journalist and don't quite understand why he is so angry towards Corbyn.

Load of pompous horse faeces, sorry...

Agree with most of this article but by no means all of it as many of the readers' comments make pertinent observations which question some of the article's argument. Mr Cohen has his blind spots and one of them is the thrice mentioned UKIP. To write that they (UKIP) are 'little Englanders' who 'defend Putin' and, by implication, are 'brutish' is factually inaccurate, simplistic and plainly wrong. Bias and politically blinkered argument works both ways and Mr Cohen should step away from his Observer stronghold and allow himself time to re-think a few of his unaccountable-for prejudices.

The majority of people who are voting for Corbyn are not remotely interested in this historical pontification. They're interested in his low expenses, the fact that he's photographed getting the bus home, his commitment to a fairer society, the policies he is outlining. That's not to say that your points may not have validity (though your own bias is just as bad as the the one you are pointing the finger at). Ultimately, however, you, like many I see who are caught up in a middle class, London-centric bubble, are missing the whole point of Corbyn's popularity.

I believe Nick Cohen's What's Left has just been re-released at what seems a more than opportune moment given the current convulsions within the Labour Party. It will serve as a timely reminder and warning of just what may go wrong should Corbynism defy all expectations and gain any long term traction. I am surprised therefore that the current tendency, from all sides, to settle on the "he's a nice guy, but..." assessment. Given the subject matter of the book, I'm surprised nobody is drawing parallels between Corbyn and the host of left wing 'intellectuals' of the 30s who could not bring themselves to condemn Stalinism and the Soviet Union. Those well-meaning egalitarian individuals who were so readily 'potemkined' through a sort of wilful blindness. Men and women who so craved a new fairer world order, who were so frustrated by the flaws of parliamentary democracy, who were so in thrall to radical intellectual fashion that they could tour the Soviet Union during some of the worst famines in human history and write home of full bellies and laughing proletarians. Those people like Corbyn and many of his supporters were doubtlessly 'nice' and doubtlessly operating with the best of intentions, but that's not enough in an adult human being. That sort of moral pretension is inexcusable in all but the adolescent. The preservation of one's ethical purity by selective redaction of any facts or events which might sully the 'brand', the logical twists undertaken to draw moral equivalences which condone barbarity are not the hallmarks of 'nice guys' acting in good faith. They are the actions of moral imbeciles. I still read articles which persist in painting the Cold War as a stand off between two irreconcilable ideologies as though we are meant to conclude we're disinterested observers looking upon the story of 'two houses alike in dignity'. We're not. At least not if we have read any serious history, if we possess any modicum of intellectual honesty, if we reject the meretricious appeals of radical chic (or whatever its contemporary might be called) and if we possess principles which can be brought to bear on a real and imperfect world rather than the idealised canvas which forms the ground of so many a sixth form psychodrama. The present day analogies are just too striking. Putin, Islamism... "What use is power without principle?" Answer: power; the ability to oppose injustice, to effect change, however messy and compromised the process; the agency to do more than strike poses, to be more than a posturing hypocrite. Yet the cocoon of perpetual ethical purity just seems too enveloping. Too many just won't break out. For every Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Shaw, Sartre, Wells, we have an Owen Jones, an Alistair Milne, a Monbiot, a Greewald, a Pilger or that ludicrous Penny woman. Just the other week in the Guardian, we had Oborne's whitewashing of Hizb it-Tahir which brought to mind (considerations of literary merit aside) HG Well's infamous conclusion "I have never mat a man so fair, candid and honest" following his grotesque interview with Stalin. Not that 'balance' wasn't restored. The Guardian followed up with a hatchet job of monumentally snide proportions on Majid Nawaaz based entirely on sly insinuation and anonymous quotations from-and the irony is just too sublime-a reporter whom it seems has fond memories of an uncle who turns out to have been one of Khomeni's butchers-in-chief...though one whose penchant for natty suits apparently mitigates his excesses since, I imagine, in Guardian circles a dash of hipsterism is always a progressive signifier. Now it would be a stretch to suggest the attack on Nawaaz or the regular defaming of Cohen have matched the calumnies launched against Koestler, Serge or Orwell for their crimes of clear sightedness and moral consistency but I do sincerely wish that the day will come when Cohen gets his 'told you so' moment a la Robert Conquest*. This day may be some time in arriving but when it does, I think the lesson that must prevail is that the battle is won but, if history is our guide, the useful idiots will soon regroup and a new fatuous campaign will soon be joined in the cause of ...insert example of identitarian lunacy... So, in answer to the earnest young man who demanded an explanation as to why I would sooner stick six inch nails in my ears than vote for Corbyn... 1) learn some history which predates the mid nineties 2) Corbyn, however personable, is a moral and intellectual cripple * I did try 'Conquestesque' but it looked silly

Another example of the ironies of our times. Who has the moral high ground anymore? Not the left, it seems.

A powerful piece and hard to disagree with any of it save the lazy tone of despair. Anyone who shares this view but does not act on it needs to explain why they are ceding the field to Corbyn. Labour members who agree with this need to get stuck in. Non Labour members who feel this way need to join. It saddens me to see Nick talking about the party in the third person.

Corbyn: “The expansion of Nato into Poland and the Czech Republic has particularly increased tensions with Russia.” Assuming Corbyn said this prior to the Ukrainian crisis, this was just stating the obvious. Using it to point-and-sputter at Corbyn suggests a higher degree of cluelessness than we've come to expect from Nick Cohen.