Cruel Britannia

A leftist British journalist, Cohen is the kind of writer who must relish making enemies. British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Labor Party cohorts are his main targets in this collection of columns on politics and society that were previously published in the British press, mostly in the Observer. Cohen's big issue is that Blair's New Labor has mimicked its Conservative Thatcherite predecessors. As he writes in his introduction: ""The same themes kept being heard, the same vices were displayed, only the suits were different."" Cohen's caustic tone indicates that he feels personally betrayed that Blair's government hasn't adhered to the unionist politics that Cohen obviously favors. With the class-based anger that is a tradition in England, he also takes on the legal system, psychologists and the media. Occasionally, as in a piece criticizing Britain's unwillingness to impose trade sanctions on Burma's military regime for its support of the drug trade, Cohen hits his mark. As often as not, however, his razor pen misses, as in a McCarthyesque column excoriating Labor for hiring an economic consultant who once worked for the CIA. To most readers, the sum total of these columns will add up to a dogmatic voice from the leftist wilderness. Of course, a minority will relish the questions he raises, and more than a minority will take pleasure from the sharpest jottings of his poison pen. But even Americans who share his views (and those who feel toward Bill Clinton the way Cohen feels toward Blair) will have to be avid followers of British politics and society to fully appreciate this collection. (Aug.)