Oliver Kamm has a very good post on a piece by John Kampfner in this week's New Statesman about Nick Cohen's book. Do read the whole post.

I have one point to make. In his piece in the Statesman this week, John Kampfner (who is a friend) refers to a piece he wrote in 2003 "in which I sought to explain how a small group of British politicians and journalists, who counted themselves as still of the left, had more in common with the US neoconservatives than they cared to admit."

But, as Oliver Kamm points out:

Those Kampfner named were an eclectic group, of whom only two - John Lloyd and David Aaronovitch - clearly counted themselves as "still of the left". The others comprised two prominent figures in the Conservative Party (one was the MP Michael Gove, and the other was Daniel Finkelstein, former Director of Research for the party); Stephen Pollard, who does not count himself on the Left at all; and Melanie Phillips, whose views I would categorise as communitarian rather than left-wing or right-wing. Of these, and so far as I know, only Stephen is an identifying neoconservative.

Where things go even more awry is in John Kampfner's piece this week, in which he writes:

It matters that Cohen, like his fellow pro-war cheerleaders, comes from a far-left background. It was a part of the far left that brooked no dissent. They do not come from the mainstream left, which I would loosely define as social democratic or democratic socialist or liberal. They come from a tradition where politics is about black and white, and where opponents (even those who diverge slightly) are heretics. Polemic comes easily to them.

I am, of course, one of those pro-war cheerleaders. My political trajectory can be, and often is, criticised or pilloried. But in all the great variety of labels I have had attached to me (my favourite was when I was working for the Fabian Society, and Socialist Organiser awarded me their Prat of the Week title) never once have I been described as having had a "far-left" background.

Which is not surprising really, given that my political memberships have been :

1980-87 Young Conservatives

1987-2001 Labour Party

1989-92 researcher to Peter Shore

1992-95 Fabian Society

1995-97 Social Market Foundation

Then again, I was Chief Leader Writer on that hotbed of Trotskyism, the Daily Express. I guess that's the "far-left background".