Nick Cohen is one of the main reasons to buy the Observer, and today's column is as incisive as always. I don't always - rarely, in fact, other than on the Iraq war - agree with him, but he is one of the few must-read columnists around at the moment.

He has a typically insightful line:

New Labour, of course, had planned to run a negative campaign against Howard which might have driven away Tory supporters. But Crosby showed his genius by stopping it when he successfully branded New Labour as anti-semitic. We're now in the situation where Howard plays the race card two or three times a week against gypsies, asylum seekers and immigrants from every country except Australia. Yet when you attack him for it, the race card is played back at you and you are accused of being an anti-semite. This is the racial politics of the politically correct age.