Rod Liddle made his name opposing the Iraq War. Economically, he never left the Left. There was a passage in Selfish, Whining Monkeys in which he pointed out the similarities between Frankfurt and Chicago as a way of explaining why the Frankfurt School and the Chicago School blended so well. That was the work of a real intellect. To the best of my knowledge, there is now no one with what would once have been called three Fleet Street columns, by which I do not mean three per week on the same paper. One would love to see Rod’s go to voices of the anti-woke Left, but who? No one who could write like him, that’s for sure.
I only knew Rod slightly, after he had moved back to the North East in recent years. But no matter how wrong I thought that he was, he was always a glorious read, and very friendly in person. I once sent him a pamphlet to ask him to give it an endorsement to print on the cover. His reply was, “I don’t agree with it.” So that was what went on the cover: “I don’t agree with it.” Rod Liddle. When I told him that (after a debate at which he had been speaking alongside Richard Holden and Tom Harwood; it was quite a night), he laughed so hard that he spat out his drink. He will be missed terribly. He already is.
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