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Nick talks to Lowdown regular, author and Guardian columnist Rafael Behr about what Labour does now in government after 14 years in opposition on the sidelines of terrible Tory governments delivering austerity, brexit, a bungled pandemic response, five failed prime ministers, economic decline and collapsing councils and public services.

Will the UK inherited from the Tories prove to be a poisoned chalice for PM Sir Keir Starmer and co or can Labour rescue and rejuvenate a country battered by years of Tory misrule?

Rafael concludes Labour may have the policies and the right people to carry them out but wonders whether Sir Keir and his chancellor Rachel Reeves have the political vim to sell their vision and plans to the electorate. Already, the BBC has declared Labour's blink-and-you'd've-missed-it political honeymoon to be "over."

Rafael @rafaelbehr concedes Labour has its work cut out - as latest opinion polls suggest - and a rocky passage lies ahead. But the Conservatives have not even begun to examine the reasons for their crushing defeat in July.

Most media attention has been focussed on the split on the Tories' far right, and with Nigel Farage\s latest vehicle, Reform, while steadfastly ignoring the hemorrhaging of one-time rock solid Conservative seats to the Liberal Democrats, including the Witney and Maidenhead constituencies of former prime ministers  Lord Cameron and Theresa May. Rafael contends that the famous "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" - which the Tories also lost to the Lib Dems - remain particularly disgusted by brexit and its abject and predictable failure.

Rafael's recent book Politics: A Survivor's Guide: How to stay engaged without getting enraged is published by W.F.Howes Ltd and available at Amazon and in all good bookshops.

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Nick Cohen chats withAnnette Dittert, London Correspondent and bureau chief for ARD, Germany's first and celebrated post-war public broadcaster -  also known as "Das Erste" (The First).

The Far Right AfD (Alternative for German) made stunning gains in recent state elections in eastern German in Thuringia and Saxony, throwing mainstream parties into a funk and causing shockwaves across Europe. What does this mean for Germany 80 less than 80 years after the defeat of the Nazis?

Annette, @annettedittert also a filmmaker, columnist and author, talks about the huge widespread disillusionment Germans share about the current coalition government led by the Social Democrat chancellor Olaf Scholz. There is also  growing popular dismay over the state of Germany itself where nothing, as with spades in the UK, seems to work any more.

What can be done to counter the threat of the AfD which is profoundly anti-EU, and anti-immigrant and is seen to be a cheerleader for Vladimir Putin and opponent of aid to Ukraine?

Anglophile Annette also talks about her depression over the state of the UK under the 3 year Boris Johnson shit show and how Brexit has helped destroy the UK's reputation and and power in Germany and elsewhere, to the point where few Germans now appear interested in what happens there.

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Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown on the UK's greatest taboo - the ever-deepening Brexit crisis - from Chris Grey, emeritus Professor @RoyalHolloway, and author of the highly-regarded and must-read blog,  Brexit and beyond.

Extra Brexit food checks come in from next week - threatening food price rises and shortages. Meanwhile, the Tories fail to get one of its promised "Canada-style free trade agreements" with Canada!

Every week, @chrisgreybrexit - also author of the book  Brexit Unfolded  - exposes the many absurdities, lies and disasters of the Brexit Britain clown show and explains how the Brexiteers' preposterous promises were never remotely deliverable and were always likely to cause huge damage to the UK's economy and standing in the world. For example,  we should now be seeing the Silicon Valley of the East End's Hoxton - as promised by @DanielJHannan. Er...where is it?

Both Chris and Nick lament the chronic failure of the BBC and other MSM to hold to account the charlatans like Hannan , Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage who mis-sold Brexit. 

But how can Labour handle the Brexit mess they are set to inherit when so many people who voted for it refuse to accept the mayhem they were conned into inflicting on all of us?

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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Chris Dillow, the economist, and author of the Stumbling and Mumbling blog.

Chris -  @CJFDillow - is a keen commentator on  British managerialism - the curse of incompetence and privileged entitlement that led to the Post Office scandal and blights much of modern Britain today.

Chris explains how modern Britain seems to reject competent management - opting instead for psychopaths and incompetents - often a combination of the two - who practise "managerialism" rather than efficient management that prioritises the good over bad.

All too often, today's hirers prize over-confidence - preferably relayed with private school tones - over quietly stated and competent management.  

The result is a UK - beset by management scandals - where nothing seems to work. 

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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Daniella Peled, Managing Editor of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, on the terrible conflict in Gaza .

At a time when South Africa is bringing its genocide case against israel before the International Court of Justice, Daniella discusses with Nick the allegations of Israel's war crimes as well as the crimes committed by Hamas on October 7th. 

Daniella talks about the extreme political voices in Israel today and the impact these are having on the current conflict in Gaza and on the region. Truth is often said to be the first casualty of war. So, what roles are misinformation and lies playing in the current conflict?

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Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown from Professor Rob Ford of Manchester University, professor of political science, co-author of the award-winning book Revolt on the Right, and political commentator and pundit extraordinaire about the perfect storm of woe descending on the Tories.

The disasters of Brexit, cost of living, the bungling of Covid, Partygate, the catastrophic and chaotic reigns of Boris Johnson and Liz "The Lettuce" Truss have been followed by the Rishi Sunak sh1tsh0w.

Exhausted and divided , and appealing only to headbangers in their own party, the Tories stagger on from one disaster to the next, desperately trying to limit the scale of the tsunami of voter retribution heading their way.  How big will the defeat be or will they manage somehow to salvage enough of a base to threaten a come-back in the not-too-distance future?

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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Matt Johnson,  author of How Hitchens can save the Left  [Pitchstone Books] a celebrated study of the writer and polemicist Christopher Hitchens who sadly died 12 years ago aged just 62.

Hitchens lived in the US and was a controversial and vivid commentator on the US and its various foreign policy adventures following the 9/11 terror atrocities in the US.  He started adult life as a Marxist but later espoused causes that were labelled "neo-con" at the time.

But what would "Hitch" have made of a topsy-turvy politics which has seen dangerous buffoons like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson come to power and the rise of an authoritarian right that Matt Johnson identifies as the posing the greatest current  threat to Mankind? Nick and Matt discuss this endlessly fascinating and brilliant writer and wonder what on earth he would have made of it all.

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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown  from Professor Shlomo Sand, author and  historian about his new book A Brief Global History of the Left  (Polity).

What is happening to the Left? It seems to be dying a slow death in the West and certainly in Israel.. While many commentators have predicted its demise, the Left has always defied these bleak prognoses and risen from the ashes in the most unexpected ways.
Nevertheless, we are witnessing today a global decline in organised movements on the Left, and while social struggles continue to challenge dominant political regimes, these efforts do not translate into support for traditional left parties or into the creation of dynamic movements on the Left.

Bestselling historian Shlomo Sand tells Nick that the global decline of the Left is linked to the waning of the idea of equality that has united citizens in the past and inspired them to engage in collective action.  Professor Sand and Nick also discuss the current crisis in Israel and Gaza.

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Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown on the brutal conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza from Daniella Peled, Managing Editor of the of Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR).

Daniella puts into context the latest conflict  between Israel and Hamas. Approximately 1,400 Israelis were killed by Hamas on October 7th. Since then, the Israeli assault on Gaza has killed at least 4,000 civilians, and is leading to a humanitarian crisis.

Daniella compares this latest violence with other conflicts that she has studied around the world.

She and Nick try to make sense  of the latest conflict between Israel and Palestinians, the prospect of peace between the 2 sides and examine the turbulent political situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories leading up to the lethal Hamas attack on Israel from October 7th.

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Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown from celebrated lawyer and author David Hooper whose latest book, Buying Silence,  How oligarchs,  corporations and plutocrats use the law to gag their critics (Biteback) exposes  how the rich and powerful use vexatious so-called SLAPP legal actions - Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation - to silence and destroy whiste-blowers, journalists and campaigners.

Dodgy chancers from notorious warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin to the corrupt Robert Maxwell have found London courts law firms willing to abuse libel, data and privacy laws to ruin their critics and to deploy any tactics, including the use of private detectives and PR agencies.

David Hooper explains that it is the crippling costs of defending such actions that pose such a threat to press freedom, freedom of speech and to the rule of Law in the UK.

What can be done to counter this threat and why are solicitors and barristers being allowed to get away with such flagrant abuses of behalf of their often dubious clients, that have included sanction Russian oligarchs and even controversial former US presidents?

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This week, Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown from Dr Dave Rich, Head of Policy for the Community Security Trust (CST) - an organisation that provides security for Jewish communities and institutions. Dave is also an expert in left wing anti-semitism and the author of the book Everyday Hate: How antisemitism is built into our world – and how you can change it  (Biteback.)

Jews in the UK often suffer instances of antisemitism when there is conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Dave reports that such incidents have increased four-fold in the wake of the tragic and horrific Hamas attacks on Israel and the retaliatory strikes on Gaza by the Israeli military.

But it seems only Jews suffer from this phenomenon. For example, Russians in the UK seemingly experience no such back-lash despite Putin's illegal attack and genocide against Ukraine. Why is antisemitism alive and kicking in the UK, both on the left and on the right, and what can be done to counter it?

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Nick Cohen talks to Yascha Mounk, the political scientist and author, about his new book about the astonishing rise of "Woke ideology" - The Identity Trap: A  story of ideas and power in our time.

According to the Washington Post,  "whatever you call it — identity politics, political correctness, wokeness or cancel culture — some new power seems to be at work in our culture and institutions."

Yascha tells Nick that advocates of this "Woke" ideology fixate on identity to the exclusion of all else, and that many reject “universal values and neutral rules like free speech and equal opportunity as mere distractions.”  He argues that this ideology has grown ever more embedded in society - influencing many institutions.

Right wing extremist supporters of Donald Trump are already manipulating fears over "The Great Awokening""  for the 2024 presidential elections in the hope that voters will see this revolutionary strain of identity politics as a threat to American values.

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Nick talks with Anne Applebaum, the celebrated American journalist, author and historian about her new book Autocracy Inc., The dictators who want to rule the world, published by Penguin.

Putin, Xi Jinping, Jong Un, Trump, Maduro - dictators great and small - wannabe or real deal - dominate the news space these days. Democracy hasn't been under so much pressure since the 30's and 40's.  Anne talks about the forces driving this new age of autocracy and the men with the often little iron fists who want to rule their part of the world. Meanwhile, some are doing their patriotic duty to themselves by enriching themselves at the cost of their country. "L'etat - c'est a moi!"

After seventeen years as a columnist at The Washington Post, Anne became a staff writer at The Atlantic in January 2020. She is the author of five critically acclaimed and award-winning books: Twilight of Democracy, Red Famine, Iron Curtain, Between East and West, and Gulag, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. She divides her time between Poland, where her husband Radoslaw Sikorski is foreign minister, and Washington, D.C.

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Nick Cohen talks to James Hawes, Renaissance man, historian, writer and novelist about the Tories' southern English tribe and the threat it poses to the rest of the UK.

James, the author of The Shortest History of England,  predicts the Tories will become ever more extreme and nationalist in electoral defeat and that the eventual break up of the UK looks unavoidable. The UK's curse - its first-past-the -post electoral system has guaranteed virtual Tory hegemony for long periods of contemporary history, and the chronic decline of the country.

James Hawes thinks PR could help transform the UK's political map, and its fortunes.  But without it,  the Tories will inevitably reassume power and continue their damaging revolt against Europe and the whole of the UK, leading inevitably to the eventual collapse of a 220 year old union.

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This week, Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Jonathan Portes , Professor of Economics and Public Policy at King's College London, ex- Chief Economist at the Cabinet Office.  Jonathan is also  a Senior Fellow of the Economic and Social Research Council's UK in a Changing Europe initiative, which examines the UK's now troubled relatIonship with the EU.

Can anything be done to prevent the UK's growing economic crisis? Is decline inevitable? Jonathan reveals how the UK's growth rate shrank by three-quarters following the 2008 crash. Now the country's annual growth rate is an anaemic half a percent with the economy projected to double every 120-140 years instead of the pre-2008 35-year period. Inevitably, Brexit's not helping as it  hits trade and tax revenues. But there are other systemic failures.

Jonathan says there's plenty of things a new Labour government could do - despite the calamity of Brexit - to try and run things around:  build homes, reform social ansd tax policy plus up-date our dysfunctional and decrpit voting system

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Professor Tim Bale of the Queen Mary University of London is widely looked on as the UK's keenest academic observer of the Conservative Party. 

Tim's latest book The Conservative Party after Brexit  (published by Polity) charts the Party's dizzying descent into populist and radical hard right Brexit populism. Have the Tories truly transmogrified into to the far right europhobic party they appear to be  or are they merely aping one to appeal to the ageing reactionaries controlling local Tory constituencies, and, against the odds, cling onto power whatever the cost to the country?

Tim Bale argues the Tories are almost certainly on the way out  of power- and thatb Rushi Sunak doesn't appear to have what it takes to save them.

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Russia expert and author Dr Jade McGlynn joins Nick Cohen from Kyiv to talk about Ukraine's tragedy - a Russia that has been badly run by bad men - with a couple of rare exceptions here and there. And how this also happens to be Russia's tragedy. 

Jade explains how the recent "Mad March on Moscow" by Wagner militia mafioso Yevgeny Prigozhin is a symptom of Vladamir Putin's dysfunction and despotism, and how hatred flows now flows between Ukraine and Russia like drones and missiles.

Jade McGlynn - widely acknowledged as a brilliant and insightful author and Russian observer - is the author of two recent landmark books relating to the tragedy now playing out in Ukraine - Russia's  War,  published by Pushkin House, and Memory Makers, just published by Bloomsbury. 

Memory Makers, The Politics of the past in Putin's Russia,  is based on Jade's analysis since 2014 of the start of Russia's illegal incursions into Ukraine. The book examines how Russia's repeated misadventures into its neighbour's territories are driven by the obsessive lies and myths it's gaslit into believing by Putin, and too many of his predecessors.

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The Lowdown from Nick Cohen this week examines the issue of race and diversity in the UK with the freelance writer and author Tom Owolade.

Tom's brilliant and ground-breaking book This is not America - published by Atlantic  - argues that too much of the debate about race in Britain has been viewed through the prism of American experiences and history.  This prism fails to reflect the  challenges – and achievements – of an increasingly diverse black British population and distorts how many people view the issue of race in the UK.

Tom tells Nick that too few  Brits understand the ethnic changes that are taking place in the UK or even the wide diversity of black British communities themselves, especially given the arrival of people from west and east Africa in recent years. Tom also believes class is a hugely important additional factor in the UK.

Tom and Nick  explore the significant differences in the history and experiences of black Brits and Black Americans.  You can read Nick's assessment of Tom's important debut book in his Substack column,  Writing from London

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Nick Cohen speaks in depth about Britain's growing Brexit food crisis with Liz Webster from the campaigns, Save British Farming and Save British Food.

#Brexit has already smashed food supply lines and jeopardised Britain's food security. Now new Brexit checks on EU imports scheduled for October look certain to lead to even more empty supermarket shelves and further fuel food inflation. 

Liz Webster explains how  Brexit threatens to worsen even further Britain's already chronic food shortages, a crisis already exacerbated by climate change and Putin's illegal aggression against Ukraine.

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Nick talks to Professor Tim Bale of the Queen Mary University of London, who is widely looked on as the UK's keenest academic observer of the Conservative Party.

Poll after poll indicates a near-extinction event for the Conservative Party on July 4th.  The disasters of Brexit, Johnson and Truss coupled with the Tories' tedious and interminable culture wars have long exposed the supposed go-to party of government as more of an electoral suicide cult than anything else.

Tim and Nick discuss the potential scale of defeat for the Tories and whether or not -post-election -  they will try to recapture the vote-rich heartlands of the political centre ground or cling to its Farageist-Brexity wet blanket, a strategy that looks guaranteed to condemn them to the fringes of British politics for years to come, and possibly leave them exposed to a Reform Party reverse take-over.

@ProfTimBale 's  latest book The Conservative Party after Brexit  (published by Polity) charts the Party's dizzying descent into nationalist and radical hard right Brexit populism.

Don't forget to read Nick's regular Substack column Writing from London.

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 @NickCohen4 and Guardian political columnist @rafaelbehr discuss the potential for an extinction-level general election result for the Tories on July 4th.

Time and events seem to have caught up with the Conservative Party at last as they face retribution at the hands of an exasperated electorate after 14 years of chaos and 5 prime ministers, plus policy disaster after policy disaster including Brexit, Austerity, the bungling of Covid, the Tufton Street insanity of "Trussonomics", turds in rivers and seas and the endless Rwanda/immigration fiasco. And then there is the serial buffoonery and malfeasance of Boris Johnson.

Rafael and Nick discuss how the Conservatives find themselves beached on political territory between the rabid right they tried and failed to appease and the centre ground  where people have become increasingly repelled by Tory incompetence and hard right, populist antics.  E.g. Tories may boast of "getting brexit done" but scarcely of brexit itself.

Rafael is one of the Guardian's leading columnists and observers of the political scene. Rafael's book - "Politics - A Survivor's Guide" is published by Atlantic.

Don't forget to read Nick's regular Substack column Writing from London.

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Nick talks to celebrated author, columnist and editor Will Hutton about his new book, This Time No Mistakes:  How to Remake Britain (Bloomsbury), described as "a brilliant book" by no less a figure than Sir Keir Starmer.

If  Labour wins - as currently expected - how does it pull the UK out of the doom cycle it's been put into by the Tories? Will explains how much work has to be done by Starmer and his team to put the country back on its feet after the Tory-inflicted disasters of austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson and last, but not least, Liz Truss and her notorious mortgage-doubling "mini budget".

How do you re-boot an economy growing when Brexit alone is forecast to eventually knock a ruinous 10 per cent off GDP and when wages have stagnated during 14 years of Tory misrule? 

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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from leading economist Danny Blanchflower CBE - onetime external member of the Bank of England's interest rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee.

Danny foresaw economic woes mounting up in 2007 and predicted a crash - a year or so before the start of the bank collapses that led to the Great Recession. 

Since then, the Tories have visited on the country one failed economic project after another - austerity, Brexit, Trussanomics. Now the average Brit is forced to pay what's been called the "Moron Premium"  for their chronic incompetence - higher food prices, extortionate energy bills and more expensive mortgages, while a failing economy stagnates in recession.

The Tories have predictably descended into  in-fighting and sinister culture wars as they await their inevitable rout at the next election. But what can Labour do to pull the UK economy out of its current death spiral?

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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown  from Professor Tim Bale of the Queen Mary University of London, who is widely looked on as the UK's keenest academic observer of the Conservative Party.

The Tories have been left reeling and predictably even more mutinous by their  catastrophic defeats in last week's two by-elections in their hitherto safe seats of Kingswood in south Gloucestershire and Wellingborough in north Northamptonshire.

Not only did they lose Kingswood with a 16.4 % swing, where Labour only needed a relatively modest 11-point swing. They also lost Wellingborough, where the swing was 28.5% - the second highest swing from Conservative to Labour in any post-war by-election.

Tim - @ProfTimBale - discusses the shatteringly few options now left open to an incompetent populist governing party that is becoming more and more loathed by voters.  Seemingly, all they have left to clutch are the meagre straws of their deranged Rwanda policy and the tattered flag of a failed Brexit project. So, will delaying Rishi Sunak's inevitable day of judgement only make a terrible situation even worse?

Tim's latest book The Conservative Party after Brexit  (published by Polity) charts the Party's dizzying descent into populist and radical hard right Brexit populism. 

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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from John McTernan, one-time political secretary to Tony Blair and seasoned political strategist and commentator.

How does Labour not only win but replace the Tories finally as the natural party of government? 

14 years of Tory misrule have brought the failed projects of Brexit and  austerity  and the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss shitshows. Now Rishi Sunak and his divided rabble fester low down in the polls, waging their culture wars, while the country falls apart around them.

John argues that people are crying out for real change and Labour has an opportunity to win big and stay in power. Will Keir Starmer grasp the opportunity and give people the change they want and that the UK desperately needs?

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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown  from US journalist and author Matt Johnson on the threat posed - yet again - by Donald Trump and his deranged far right MAGA cult that has captured the Republican Party.

Matt - @mattjj89 - the author of  How Hitchens can save the Left, explains how there is little evidence so far of a  tangible centre-left coalition to confront Trump - who is a dead cert to be  the Republicans' nomination to run for the presidency in 2024, despite facing 91 felony charges.. 

Incredibly, despite trying to overturn the result of the 2020 general election and provoking the January 6th insurrection, Trump is running against the incumbent Joe Biden who is 80 now and will be 86 were he to survive a second stint in the White House.

Trump himself is 78 but exudes a certain demonic energy in comparison with Biden whose age and unpopular running mate, Vice-President Harris Kamala Harris, could prove to be telling factors counting against a successful re-run.

Nick asks  Matt what can be done to save the US and the world from the undoubted calamity of a second Trump  presidency?

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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown on the Putin lie machine from well-renowned Kremlin disinformation expert and author Peter Pomerantsev. Earlier this month, the US seized Kremlin-run websites and charged two Russian state employees - of the TV channel Russia Today with conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act. The pair remain at large. 

Peter's first book, the best-seller Nothing is true and Everything is possible broke new ground by exposing the inner workings of Russia's misinformation and disinformation armoury. His third book is How to win an information war: The propagandist who outwitted Hitler. Peter talks about the growing sophistication of Putin's disinformation machine which he is using in his war against Ukraine and in his attempts to influence elections, including the United States where his favoured candidate and convicted felon Donald Trump is hoping for re-election. Peter says the Kremlin's best foreign agents are the so-called "useful idiots" in influential positions who are not even aware that they are being manipulated into helping Putin and his various plots.

Donald Trump may worship at the altar of his hero Vladimir Putin. But both men have a strikingly similar tone of discourse - epic mendacity and disinformation snarled sneeringly and sarcastically at anyone seeking to hold them to account.

Read Nick's latest Substack column Writing from London - Sarcastic, sneering and sadistic: The voice of modern power, What Putin and Trump's propagandists have in common.

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Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 and the author and political commentator Steve Richards @steverichards14 discuss the challenges faced by the Labour government as it faces down a ferocious backlash from the radicalised right and far right, and their client media.

How can Sir Keir Starmer tackle the series of omni-crises - whether relating to the economy or public services - left by 14 years of disastrous and frequently deranged Tory government? Far right riots and trumped up stories about Starmer's gifted clothes and glasses have threatened to knock the new government off its stride. Or so the right would have us believe. The fury over the new government's planned to axe the Winter Fuel Allowance for thousands of pensioners have also sent the party into a nosedive in the polls. But how much of the current rumpus is genuine upset over Labour bungling and insensitivity and how much is rightwing tabloid-confected fury?

Nick and Steve also discuss the emerging political landscape, focusing on Keir Starmer's leadership and the potential for a more radical approach to government. Could Labour caution over issues like Europe and concern over losing voters to the Faragist and Tory populist right repel the very people who put Labour into power? Could these voters be driven into the arms of the Greens and Liberal Democrats? Labour won the election on a low turn out. How can the party now win the right to govern and lead the UK according to its own values and goals?

How can Labour achieve the growth it needs to put the country back on the road to recovery if it approaches with such apparent timidity issues such as rejoining the Customs Union and the Single Market? How can it balance the books without upsetting constituencies like pensioners who have so far reaped the benefits of Tory rule at the perceived cost of the young?

Steve is an accomplished political commentator, author and podcaster. His latest book Turning Points: Crisis and Change in Modern Britain, from 1945 to Truss is published by Macmillan and his regular podcast Rock and Roll Politics is a must listen.

Read Nick Cohen's regular and compelling Substack column Writing from London

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The French post-revolutionary politician Talleyrand said of the Bourbon royals that they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. In contrast, the Tories appear to have learned nothing, and forgotten everything - particularly about winning elections - including the longstanding UK political rule that the further the drift from centre ground politics to batshit extremes, the more certain the thrashing at the ballot box.

Nick Cohen - @NickCohen4 - chats about the increasingly dire state of the Tory party with Nick Tyrone - the author, policy advisor and Tory Party observer and commentator whose Substack column as Neoliberal Centrist Dad - nick.tyrone.substack.com - is a must read for those of us desperate for the return of sanity to our national political discourse.

If the Beatles were "The Fab Four" - then how would you describe the 4 remaining contenders for the hollow crown of the Conservative Party - Kim Badenoch, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick? "The Unfab Four?"

The Tories were obliterated in the 2024 General Election - reduced to a rump of just 121 MPs compared to Labour's 404 and the Liberal Democrats' 72. And yet - according to @NicholasTyrone - the Tories have learned absolutely nothing from their rout - believing that the party's mistake was "not being right wing enough", and that eventually, the Great British Public will see the error of their ways and look kindly on all the Tories' failed policies from Brexit to its failed economic and immigration policies.

Former Tory MP Theresa May recently warned her party that it has become so obsessed with chasing votes from Nigel Farage's Reform votes that it had ignored the flight of support to the Liberal Democrats and Labour.

Nick Tyrone believes the 2 leading contenders - Kim Badenoch and particularly Robert Jenrick- are also in thrall to a doomed electoral strategy that they would probably prove to be electoral duds. He tells Nick the Tories are still chasing the "mythical 52 per cent" of the electorate who voted for Brexit in 2016 - refusing to accept that public opinion has now moved decisively against Brexit and that many who did vote for it have either died or woken up to the damage it is doing to the UK

As ever, the Tories seem obsessed with getting voters back from Reform while ignoring liberal minded Tories who've rejected the party's match to radical right extremism and voted for Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Greens at the election. But Nick believes the greater threat facing the Tories is internal - a probably unavoidable schism between the sensible so-called One nation Tories - so far bullied into silence - and the hard right wing who dream of rapprochement with Farage and co.

Read Nick Cohen's Substack column Writing from London, Politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

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Nick Cohen chats with Simon Nixon, one of the UK's foremost and finest economics writers about the UK'S deep economic hole and what if anything can be done to get the country out of it. Simon spoke from Riga in Latvia where he was attending a business conference.

Sir Keir Starmer has been in Brussels recently as part of a charm offensive to reset the relationship with the European Union, so recklessly upended by successive Conservative governments. But Simon explains that far from improving, our trading and cultural relations with the EU looks set to worsen thanks to Boris Johnson's badly botched "over-ready" Brexit deal.

Simon - whose columns in The Times and The Wall Street Journal have meticulously charted the last 8 years of UK national self-harm - tells Nick that Brexit was never a single event but a process that continues to damage businesses, trade and investment. He likens it to trying to cap off an out of control oil leak or a broken sewage pipe. The reality of Brexit has also shattered the Conservatives' delusion that somehow the power and prestige of the City of London would enable it to continue being the financial and banking centre of Europe - even outside the EU Single Market. But it too has suffered hugely as a result of the the UK's schism with the EU.

As his Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves prepares her budget for October 30th, Sir Keir Starmer's hands seem pretty much tied over Brexit despite all the talk of his EU "reset". Labour is anxious not to provoke a nationalist back lash over a supposed "betrayal" of Brexit, and so the new government seems willing only to tinker with comparatively minor issues at the edges. Reform of the planning system may be one of the few tools left to Labour as a way of creating growth in a moribund economy.

Simon Nixon's Substack column Wealth of Nations is one of the best and most insightful reads on economics and finance. His latest column - Europe's Crippling Risk Aversion - is here.

Nick Cohen's regular Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond is another must-read.

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The political commentator and Tory observer Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone reports back directly to Nick Cohen from the Conservative Party Conference in a wet and windy Birmingham where four rather mediocre and charisma-lite candidates are vying to be - astonishingly - the 6th Tory leader in 8 years!

Nick found the Tories weirdly euphoric at suddenly finding themselves not in charge of sorting out the huge mess they have created and dangerously deluded about themselves and their policies. Neither the party leadership contenders strutting the light fantastic at Birmingham nor the dwindling and ageing party membership showed any contrition for the disasters they have visited on the country - mainly austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss - deciding instead to double down on their old batshit obsessions from leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights to their failed Rwanda scheme and busted immigration policies.

Seemingly buoyed up by Labour's current rocky poll ratings, the Tories seem eerily confident that their failed doctrines and continued lurch to the extreme right will somehow entice the electorate back into the fold by 2029. After all, it must be the voters who got in wrong on July 4th! However, the moderate so-called "one nation" Tory wing of the party are silent, apparently not yet prepared to hold the right wing Europhobes to account for the hole they all find themselves in.

Meanwhile, the far right is on the rise in the UK, as evidenced by the riots, and are hoping to draw in supporters disillusioned by the Tories and all too easily manipulated by the its lies and hate-filled narratives. The Farageist hard right even claims it can destroy what's left of the Tory party and replace it at the next election.

Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone writes for Substack as Neoliberal Centrist Dad - nick.tyrone.substack.com - a must read if you're desperate for the return of sanity to our national political discourse.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 regular Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond is another must-read.

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Nick Cohen talks to Phillips P. O'Brien - the American author, historian and professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews about the West's bungling over Ukraine.

First the West's so-called "intelligence community" catastrophically miscalculated Ukraine's ability in fighting Russia, believing Putin's criminally insane invasion of February 2022 would be over almost before it started. Ever since then the West has been messing #Ukraine around at every turn, micromanaging President Volodomyr Zelenskyy's @ZelenskyyUa military response in accordance with its own interests, rather than those of the Ukrainians, and denying him the weapons he needs to take the war decisively to Russia.

Phillips describes the West's failure as "the triumph of too much imagination". Western leaders had imagined a Russian military that doesn't exist. They have imagined an escalation threat from Russia that doesn't exist. "So actually what they're doing is letting their imagination of what they would expect to happen," says Phillips.

@PhillipsPOBrien blames the US in particular for trying to micromanage war which means #Ukraine has been denied weapons it desperately needs. Phillips tells Nick, "you cannot micromanage a war. That what you can do is help Ukraine to win it. And that you can do. You can give Ukraine the weapons and let them use it in such a way that you know, you could at least defeat the Russian military that you could have some control over."

Mistakenly, the West clings onto the notion of the so-called "escalatory ladder" where giving Ukraine the weapons it desperate needs leads eventually to a nuclear retaliatory strike from Moscow. Phillips describes this as illusion - just like the other Western bogeyman of the war eventually toppling Putin and leaving Russia in dangerous chaos, creating an even greaer threat to the West.

Phillips says the result: the world now has a "Goldilocks war" that's "not too old, not too cold" where the Ukraine is allowed only to wear down the Russian military, but not break it. Phillips says this strategy has lead to "the sort of quagmire we see now."

You can read Phillips own regular Substack column - Phillips's Newsletter.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 regular Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond is another must-read.

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Nick chats to the Swedish Axel Gordh Humlesjö, the award-winnning Swedish investigative journalist and author about Vladamir Putin's agents have corrupted the West's banking system to fund the an illegal and genocidal war against Ukraine and their own fraudulently funded life-styles.

Axel @axelhumlesjo co-authored The Honey Trap, a book that exposed how Putin's Kremlin laundered billions through one of Sweden's most important banks - Swedbank - initially by using honeytrap sex agents to gain Kompromat on senior bank executives.

The astonishing story of the corruption of Swedbank - often described as "the most Swedish of Swedish banks" - sheds a bright light on how the Russian state has targeted banks in the West to launder money, by-pass sanctions and fund its war against Ukraine. It's how Putin and his oligarch cronies effectively turned London into "Londongrad". It has enabled the Kremlin to gain astonishing influence over large parts of Europe's financial systems and to undermine the foundations of the West itself.

Axel explains to Nick @NickCohen4 how a lot a lot of the money has been funnelled through banks, different kinds of shady, companies and dodgy offshore accounts. Russia has then used this money in a range of different ways - trying to influence political elections and referendums and funding extremist parties. Even now Russia - yet again - is thought to be using it resources to secure the election of Donald Trump as president. Putin is desperate for his stooge to be back in the White House - confident Trump will do his bidding and betray Ukraine and force it to accept surrender on Russia's ignominious and dangerous terms.

Even more tragically though, Russia's state kelptocrats have even funnelled money from the people of Ukraine and others to line their own their own pockets and use it to by-pass sanctions and fund the Russian war machine.

Danske Bank - the largest bank in Denmark was also used by Russian entities in what was described as the world's biggest ever money laundering scandal.Almost €1 trillion of suspicious transactions flowed from Estonian, Russian, Latvian and other sources through the Estonia bank branch of Danske Bank from 2007 to 2015. In December 2022, Danske Bank pleaded guilty and agreed to a $2 billion fine in a case from the US Department of Justice.

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Swedish authorities are also starting to mete out punishment to the executives who destroyed Swedbank - including former chief executive Birgitte Bonnensen who the Swedish Appeal Court sentenced last month to 15 months in prison for gross fraud. But the damage to the West - it security and financial systems - is long-standing.

The Honey Trap, Swedbank, Russia and the World's Biggest Money Laundering Scheme by Axel and his colleague Lars Berge was described by the respected author of Putin's People and Washington Post journalist Catherine Belton as " A fantastic, page-turning book about how Russian intelligence infiltrated Sweden’s biggest bank and used it as a vehicle for money laundering. It is one of the most gripping spy adventures I’ve read..."

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 regular Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond is another must-read.

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Nick Cohen chats to The Guardian's celebrated and much loved Guardian parliamentary sketch-writer John Crace about the pitiful state of UK politics over the last 14 years - dominated by the interminable shitshow of Brexit - a calamitous epoch that's seen John stick his pen into a line of Tory duds from Cameron to Sunak.

It's been such a dog's breakfast that John has long come to the conclusion that even his dog Herbie could have done a much better job of running the country! So John @JohnJCrace has a new book out from Herbie's point of view - Taking the lead - a dog at Number 10 published by Constable. Herbie's political career starts with a chance encounter with Sadiq Khan's Labrador which lands our hound hero landed Herbie a job working as a special advisor to Ed Miliband in 2014. He then goes on to work with Cameron, the "Maybot" (aka Theresa May), Bunter Johnson and is then rewarded with a ringside seat for the Liz Truss clown car & Truss's blink-and-you'll miss it premiership.

In a highly entertaining interview, John even posits the perhaps rather ungenerous theory that Liz Truss may well have been responsible for the demise of Queen Elizabeth II - having visited Her Majesty at Balmoral just two days before her death. That may be a tough rap even for Truss! Or did the Queen have a premonition of the Kwarteng-Truss mini budget and associated follies and simply come to the conclusion - at her age and stage - that it was as good a time as any to shuffle off the mortal coil? You decide!

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 regular Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond is another must-read.

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Nick Cohen chats to Washington-based journalist & substacker Ben Cohen about the November 5th presidential election - considered the most fateful and important poll in recent U.S. history, possibly since the election of 1861 that ushered in the presidency of Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War.

Ben @thedailybanter says dodgy billionaires and rightwing pollsters are trying to con people into believing that the election is still incredibly close with dubious polls and betting odds in order to help facilitate a determined Trumpist post-election "stop the steal" campaign to put the fascist Hitler fanboy and multi-convicted felon back in the White House.

But Ben says the quality polls still show Harris in the lead across the country and in the so-called "swing states" and that she "win comfortably". "I could fall flat on my face and be, and be laughed at by the rest of the industry," admits Ben to Nick. " But, I'm not convinced that it's going to be as close as people think it's going to be. I think Kamala Harris is going to win comfortably."

Ben is sure that the women of the U.S. will turn out in big numbers to vote for Harris - mainly thanks to the decision by the Trumpist Supreme Court to overturn Roe-Wade and give individual states power over abortion rights and IVF access. This election has become a fight not only for the White House and the fate of the free world - particularly Ukraine - but also over women's bodies. Ben tells Nick, "I think what people are underestimating is the women vote, who are going to come out. This is a post Roe-Wade environment where Donald Trump is widely regarded as being responsible for repealing abortion rights in America."

But how can the election be so close when it's between a distinguished public servant like Kamala Harris, who has run an immaculate campaign, and the preposterous sociopath Donald Trump, indisputably the stupidest man ever elected president and one who attempted to overturn the 2020 election through violence and lies? Ben blames the emergence of the radical right media in the U.S., "I couldn't understand it, but having lived in America for decades now, the infiltration of the Murdoch media and the right wing hate radio and the industry, the conservative media complex is powerful, he says."

So, could we be seeing a re-run of the so-called "Red Wave - that wasn't" saga of the November 2020 mid-terms when the Republicans talked up the prospects of a crushing defeat for Biden's Democrats, only for the washing ashore of a large damp squib?

Read Ben's The Banter Substacks here and listen to his podcasts here.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond explores the recent humiliating capitulation by the @washingtonpost proprietor & Amazon boss @JeffBezos to Donald Trump.

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Nick Cohen chats to Tim Walker @ThatTimWalker - journalist, columnist, commentator and playwright - about the appalling state of British journalism and how our news agenda is being driven by an increasing deranged, obsessive and extremist Tory press, mainly doing the bidding of their creepy billionaire non-dom proprietors.

Brexit, Trussonomics, Boris Johnson and his buffoonistas, Austerity - you name it, there wasn't a terrible idea or person from the radicalised right in recent years that failed to enjoy the 100% backing of the Tory press. Now, its hacks serve up nothing burgers followed by trifles in frenzied attempts to smear and destroy the new Labour government.

Tim harks back to a relatively sane age not so long ago when newspapers tried to educate its readers about the world around them, and occasionally expose wrong doing. These were the days when news was something someone somewhere did not revealed and the rest was advertising. But journalism has changed radically in recent times - and not for the better - thanks mainly to social media destroying mainstream media models and advertising streams. Alongside that, political phenomena from Brexit to immigration have helped drive The Tory press to new heights of lunacy. Increasingly, media funds go to platforming radicalised right media blowhards, extremist politics, and gobby know-nothing weirdos from mysterious think tanks funded by dark money.

The aristocrats of journalism were once reporters who investigated wrong doing and broke stories. Now the money goes increasingly to the radical right commentators whose extremism and opportunism have helped them harangue and con the country into one disaster after another. What's worse, the MSM like the BBC repeatedly give these media charlatans airtime.

Read Tim Walker's Substack column A Point of View.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 regular Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond is another must-read.

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SO, HOW DID WE ALL GET IT SO WRONG?

Pollsters and pundits predicted a close-run race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, but the consensus was that Harris had led consistently in the polls and that her victory seemed assured given the massive financial resources at her disposal, the apparent momentum and the slickness of her campaign, particularly compared to the bizarre circus of her opponent.

THE LEFT - IN A BUBBLE RAP?

Nick Cohen chats again to Washington DC-based journalist and podcaster Ben Cohen about Trump's shock landslide. Two weeks ago, Ben told The Lowdown he was confident that Harris would win - based mainly on so-called quality polling. Ben agreed that journalists from the left can operate inside a bubble and can often fail to realise how much people outside the bubble disregard or even hate them and their views. Leftist idealism and a belief in the stupidity and mendacity of the opponent can sleepwalk you into believing that people share your worldview, and are motivated by the same values.

FAILURE TO TACKLE WOKE & FACE UP TO REALITY

Ben @thedailybanter said Trump's opponents - buoyed up by the polls and the huge Harris crowds - possibly indulged in wishful thinking but they also made the mistake of not clamping down on the more wokeist tendencies on their side that played into Trump's hands and helped him scare voters away from Harris. "The left has eaten itself," Ben tells Nick."It's become a kind of parody of itself ... I've been writing about this for years, that identity politics is going to cost them the ballot because most of the country doesn't understand it."

Nick also says Joe Biden should have made it clear 2 years ago that he would only serve one term. Where did the predictions all go wrong and how much blame can be laid at the feet of the Democrats? In the end, Biden was forced off the Ticket after his calamitous presidential debate performance leaving Harris only 100 days to turn things around for the Democrats. Ben says, "it was... an insurmountable task."

THE INEVITABLE TRUMPIST TSUNAMI OF REVENGE AND STUPIDITY

Ben says everyone is filled with dread at the coming tsunami of Trumpist lunacy. Ben predicts Trump's regime will combine brutality with his trademark incompetence. He expects Trump to rip the U.S. - yet again - from the Paris Accords, undermine Nato and other international alliances - possibly fatally - betray Ukraine to Vladamir Putin and set up detention camps for immigrants - and that's just for starters. "We're in for a very scary few years, I would say," Ben tells Nick. "And we'll see how well American institutions can withstand the assault that's about to happen."

Ben adds, "The guy is a cockroach. He survived two assassination attempts, he survived two impeachment trials. He survived the democratic machine that raised, you know, several billion dollars, over a billion and a half dollars in two months, that's what Kamala Harris raised, and it was to defeat him."

Read Ben's The Banter Substack here and listen to his podcasts here.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

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Nick Cohen chats with Tom Baldwin, journalist, author, biographer of Keir Starmer and former Labour spin doctor about how the new government handles future challenges from Donald Trump to clearing up the omni-shambles left by 14 years of Tory incompetence.

HANDLING THE ORANGE MENACE

Tom @TomBaldwin66 says Starmer will probably adopt a strategy of subtlety with Trump, saying, "The way to deal with Trump is not to match him for making noise or be your own kind of populist.

The answer is not to be like Trump; it's to be the opposite of Trump. It's not to turn the other cheek, but just to learn to ignore some things. Separate the froth of social media from the actual substance of his decisions ... He's going to try and get the best out of Trump. deals he can. He's going to try and find places of ambiguity and endurance, and do his best to exploit those, rather than reinforce dividing lines with him. And you know, that's what good prime ministers and good diplomats do."

TRUMP & THE FOLLY OF BREXIT

Nick points out that the #Trump victory has only further exposed the folly and recklessness of #brexit, particularly as it seems certain that Trump will launch a series of trade wars that will leave the UK dangerously exposed to a ruinous US tariff regime.

Trump is so economically illiterate that he appears not to understand that tariffs are paid by importers, not the exporting nation, and will mean higher prices for U.S. citizens if they want anything from oversees, from a new i-phone to a Japanese car. Tom says the UK maybe shafted trade-wise but still punches above its weight in terms of military power and security, both of which could prove crucial in the dangerous days ahead. Tom says, "we have real presence at the Table and we have Europe has a real interest in working with Britain in a way that it doesn't have to work for Britain in terms of giving us a better deal for our exports  security is not about self interest. It's about mutual interest."

STARMER & THE POPULIST THREAT

Tom said a key Starmer objective is to see off the populist threat in the UK through good governance and improving public serves. If any criticism can be laid at the door of the new government, it's that it has not done enough to fully expose the disgraceful shit-show Labour inherited from the Tories. "I think the best argument you can make, particularly in government rather than opposition, is to actually show that governments can work," says Tom, "and that government can actually deliver real progress for working peoples, as government would put it."

The paperback version of Tom's bestseller, Keir Starmer, the biography, is out now with a new updated chapter on the election campaign and Labour's first few weeks of power..

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

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@Yascha_Mounk , Professor of Practice at John Hopkins University in the U.S., argues that the Democrats wrongly assumed that they would have a growing inbuilt majority because most white people voted Republican and most non white people voted Democratic. Yascha tells Nick, "actually what happened since 2016 is that Democrats gained significant share of a vote among white voters, but they lost an even more significant share of a vote among African Americans, among Asian Americans, among Native Americans, and especially among Latinos."

On race, trans-gender - you name it - Woke ideology cost the Democrats dear. Insistence on politically correct language also helped antagonise particularly working class, less educated people. Yascha says, "working class nonwhite people who may have pause at some of the things Trump says, who might not love Trump, but we say, you know, at least he's not going to judge me for saying the wrong word in some kind of way." Yascha describes as "absolutely false" the assumption that minorities were demanding major changes to the political system, adding, "most African Americans certainly wanted a reform of a police ... the majority rejected any attempt to fund the police less or to defund it'"

Yascha says progressives often ask why they should moderate their views when the radical right is "running on whatever crazy and extreme platform and they don't moderate." He adds, "the answer to that is 'We need to win and currently we're not winning.'" In contrast, Trump coldly and shrewdly saw off the threat over abortion rights by appearing to sell out his anti-abortion base. Yascha says Democrats never once compromised "to get to where the majority of American voters are."

Yascha is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Persuasion Substack - @JoinPersuasion - and also has his own Yascha Mounk Substack column. A man of many talents, Yascha hosts his own podcast, The Good Fight. Yascha's latest and highly acclaimed book - The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time - is published by Penguin.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

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In the 2nd of a 2-part interview, Nick Cohen asks author, academic & commentator Yascha Mounk where next for Trump and his MAGA cult following? Already the President-elect is creating his cabinet of freaks, buffoons and creeps. Trump has already been humiliated in his original choice for Attorney-General - the firebrand former Congressman Mat Gaetz - who's now crashed and burned amid a flurry of lurid sex and drug claims.

So, already Trump's predictably bizarre cabinet choices are causing deep alarm - for example his decision to make ex-Democrat congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard his intelligence chief. Gabbard has been accused of being a sympathiser of both Syria's and Russia's dictators - Bashar Al Assad and Vladamir Putin.

Yascha tells Nick he doesn't think Trump is senile - he sees Trump as definitely the same man as he was back in 2016 - except older and if anything more radical. So what can we expect from a second Trump presidency? For sure, the next four years promises a bumpy ride for the United States and the rest of the world, with an expected U.S.- led trade war and a betrayal of Ukraine, with the trashing of NATO thrown in for good measure..

Yascha says "you normalise Trump, you normalise the extraordinary ... this is not a coherent figure. Let's put it as politely as I can. This is a chaotic figure. This is a figure who makes no sense in charge of the most powerful nation on earth and, and in a sense attempts to kind of rationalise him rather miss the point." In many ways, Trump is a more scary figure than he was back in 2016 when he was still openly hated by many Republicans. Yascha says He has four years of experience. I don't believe he's senile. And I think when you look at how, the beginning of his, transition has gone, he is very organised, very disciplined, not tweeting about random things, making short video announcements about the policies he's going to pursue."

Yascha is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Persuasion Substack - @JoinPersuasion - and also has his own Yascha Mounk Substack column. A man of many talents, Yascha hosts his own podcast, The Good Fight. Yascha's latest and highly acclaimed book - The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time - is published by Penguin. A political scientist, Yascha is also Professor of Practice at the School of Advanced International Studies of John Hopkins University in the U.S.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Cohen chats to Lowdown favourite - the brilliant Guardian columnist & author Rafael Behr - about the gloomy outlook for the world with Donald Trump threatening the end of the world order for the West that has weathered 80 years of post-war crises - alongside a rampant radical right at home that is trying to delegitimise Labour's mandate to govern.

Rafael says - of the danger posed to Kemi Badenoch's Tories - that if they go ahead and throw in their lot with Trump and his crazed MAGA nationalists, "I think they [the Tories & Reform] underestimate the extent how far into mainstream, unpolitical, quite small "c" conservative Britain, a kind of visceral suspicion of America actually goes even before you've got Trump there." Farage of course already has, as Nick, put it - putting his buddy Trump's interests ahead of the UK's.

Rafael @rafaelbehr and Nick @NickCohen4 (and sometime's Raf's dog, who, BTW, inot on X!) discuss the current depressing domestic political scene with the radical right frantically trying to present the Labour government as having no mandate to govern despite a huge 170+ seat overall majority. Rafael says there is "an absence of swagger" about the Starmer government, adding, "these guys, they really are the government. And I think they need to assert that a little bit more."

Rafael @rafaelbehr believes that the failure of brexit has led to the current atmosphere of political malaise, adding "all of the  emotional and political capital that you can spend - [and-sic] all the you can make of a population for sacrifice in pursuit of a broader national goal - was squandered by Brexit as a fraudulent revolution." It means, adds Rafael, that "there will not be a day when Nigel Farage is on UK Bank Notes and the 23rd of June is our national holiday and there will be monuments to Jacob Rees Mogg and, and Boris Johnson."

Rafael's recent book Politics: A Survivor's Guide: How to stay engaged without getting enraged is published by W.F.Howes Ltd and available at Amazon and in all good bookshops.

Support the show You can also read his wonderful columns in the Guardian.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

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Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 - chats about the British radicalised right will respond to the 2nd coming of Donald Trump with Nick Tyrone - the author, activist, policy advisor and commentator and keen observer of the Tory party whose Substack column as Neoliberal Centrist Dad - nick.tyrone.substack.com - is a must read for those of us desperate for the return of sanity to our national political discourse.

Nick @NicholasTyrone says Nigel Farage - the leader of The Reform Party - is already the "We love Trump" party and betraying the UK's real interests over Trump will trouble Farageists even less than the calamity they inflicted on the country through Brexit. Nick says, I think that Farage would very much like to be the sort of equivalent of Trump. I think in this country, it will be a lot harder for Farage to do that.... we don't have a presidential system." The only problem is that Bits generally don't care for Trump and his very "un-British" and preposterous levels of arrogance.

This leaves the Labour government forced to work with the incoming Trump kakistocracy - through gritted teeth - and the Liberal Democrats as the avowedly "we hate Trump" party. As for the Tories, led - for now - by the unimpressive Kemi Badenoch, Nick says all this Trump-mainia leaves the Tories rather out on a limb as the party of "we like Trump, but not as much as Reform and Farage,"

Disturbingly, Nick does not believe Badenoch and the Tories will appeal to young male voters, many of whom are being politically radicalised by far right messaging on social media, while Trump's victory will significantly help Farage and Reform in the UK. "The problem for Starmer will be if Farage can really make the breakthrough," Nick says, adding,"I think people are underestimating how possible it is for Farage to become PM. That's what I think. I genuinely think, like, the chances of Farage becoming PM are much higher than Badenoch ever being PM. Much higher." Nick still believes Starmer - as things stand - has the best chance of winning the next election.

Both Nicks agreed that Trump and his peculiar billionaire fan-boy Elon Musk will be doing all they can to pump up Farage/Reform and far right nut jobs like Tommy Robinson who are much more in line with their thinking than the UK Tory party.

Nick also ridicules that hardy perennial fantasy of the radicalised Tory/Reform pro-Brexitists - the UK-U.S. trade deal: "This fantasy that like Trump loves Britain so much that he's going to offer a trade deal that is of a kind that America has never, ever, ever done with any nation in its history is mad, particularly when you think of Trump being 1.), a protectionist himself, America first, all that, and then 2.), his entire personality, even going back before politics, which was around, you know, screwing the other guy over and getting a great deal."

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Cohen chats with Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the U.S.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate about the fight against the forces of online hatred and extremism that pose such a threat to western values, democracy and civilisation. What can the West do to face down the out-of-control moguls who control the social media giants and profit from a tidal wave of digital hate and extremism?

Social media is destroying the truth and the currently chaotic information system is leading to authoritarianism. Imran says, "The information ecosystem has evolved in recent years and has been entirely commercially driven and has been without the consent of people - quite often - forced upon us." Imran adds people should have the ability to force change on the social media giants.

Conspiracy theories, extremist views, disinformation. misinfomation and outright lies are increasingly dominating social media more and more. Imran says extremist political movements were "benefiting from mobilising conspiracy, theory communities, hate communities, and that wasn't just happening in the U.S. You know, the lazy assumption is this is a Trump thing. It's not." He adds, "What social media platforms have done have taken... those fringe ideologies, [&] churn them into the mainstream."

Imran is one of the few to have taken on by Elon Musk and survived to tell the tale! Back in March, Imran comprehensively defeated Musk in the courts when a U.S. judge threw out attempts by the Trump boot-licker to gag Imran's CCDH organisation. But, so far, the West hasn't been as determined to take on the Leviathans of digital. "It is because of a lack of will and a lack of confidence, I would argue, amongst European and United States, lawmakers, that we have failed to hold them accountable'", Imran tells Nick, adding, "that's in part because, you know, this is difficult for us. We are true believers in Britain and in the United States in freedom of speech."

Imran says the local deli is subject to far more regulation than online social media moguls and that has ledt us all exposed to thr abuses of social media power as we saw in the U.S. presidential cam paign when. Elon Musk flagrantly put X, formerly TWITTER to the service of Donald Trump. Imran asks "How on earth can it be that social media platforms are the only businesses in America that are not subject to negligence law or any kind of scrutiny whatsoever?"

Imran Ahmed founded the CCDH in December 2017. He frequently appears in the media as an expert in online malignant behaviour (identity-based hate; misinformation; extremism; fake news; trolling; and social media). Imran is a trustee of the charity, Victim Support. He was appointed to the Steering Committee of the UK Government's Commission on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force in April 2020, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For a moment, tune out of Cliff Richard and Slade Christmas hits and Fairytale of New York, and instead tune into The Lowdown from Nick Cohen as he chats over the shitshow that was 2024 with Lowdown stalwarts Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone & Tim Walker, @ThatTimWalker on a whole list of topics including Trump, Gaza, Ukraine, Brexit, the bungling of a new new Labour government.

Guests Tim and Nick hand out special Lowdown awards for the key people and events of the year including Biggest Bore of the Year, Hero of the Year, Worst event of the Year,

 Happiest event of the Year and Biggest disappointment of the Year

Read Tim Walker's Substack column A Point of View. Tim, an established Fleet Street columnist and journalist, has written several plays including Bloody Difficult Woman about Gina Miller's brexit legal battle with Theresa May. He has a new political play in the new year on Radio 4.

Nick Tyrone is an author, activist, policy advisor and commentator and keen observer of the Tory party whose Substack column as Neoliberal Centrist Dad - nick.tyrone.substack.com - is a must read for those of us desperate for the return of sanity to our national political discourse.

Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Cohen chats to Peter Oborne, Conservative commentator, reporter and author extraordinaire about the growing threat posed to the UK by the radical right in politics, press and from the other side of the Atlantic.

Something died inside Peter Oborne @OborneTweets when he saw Sir Keir Starmer recently bound across the floor of the House of Commons to talk to Nigel Farage. Neither Labour nor the Tories seem prepared to take on Farage - not on the failed shitshow of Brexit nor on his negative message on immigration. "What an extraordinary state of affairs!" says Peter. adding, "It's shattering. I mean, Farage is, is a bigot.  His finances and the way he runs his sort of, his party, astonishing, full of dreadful people who shouldn't be seen in public, and yet somehow, it's very like Trump, that is, and they cannot find a way of tackling him or seem not even to want to."

Peter had high hopes before the election of Sir Keir Starmer, believing his working class background and record of solid achievement before entering politics helped made him an attractive political force But he now says of the PM, "he comes over as a nothing somebody's blown around by the wind". Peter believes the Labour government's current timidity is driven by an addiction to focus groups - something it shares with the Tories." He adds, " it's one of the sicknesses of our time."

Peter says Tory party is now "a vehicle for thoroughly unpleasant people and who don't understand what Britain is about" and that he same can be said of the press that used to identify as Conservative. He says, "They [right wing press] flourish by going after vulnerable minorities they're wrong about almost everything."

Peter is disturbed by Trump toady Elon Musk's threat to fund Reform, saying "what is happening here is indeed a takeover of Britain, culturally, socially, politically, and there's a massive attempt to do it economically by the United States. And it's only just started." The UK should tell these extremist far right forces to "get lost", Peter adding, "we're now moving into a world, an authoritarian world, which wants to destroy liberal democracy."

Peter Oborne is an associate editor for the Middle East Eye . His latest book published by Simon & Schuster is The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is wrong about Islam

Nick Cohen's @ latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Cohen reads the runes for 2025 with fellow Substackers and writers - Tim Walker @ThatTimWalker and Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone.

2025 promises to be full of nasty surprises - particularly following the inauguration of Donald Trump as the U.S.'s 47th presidents. Pardons for the thugs and insurrectionists of January 6th looks baked in and the impacts on Ukraine could b deadly.

Read Tim Walker's Substack column A Point of View. Tim, an established Fleet Street columnist and journalist, has written several plays including Bloody Difficult Woman about Gina Miller's brexit legal battle with Theresa May. He has a new political play in the new year on BBC Radio 4.

Nick Tyrone is an author, activist, policy advisor and commentator and keen observer of the Tory party whose Substack column as Neoliberal Centrist Dad - nick.tyrone.substack.com - is a must read for those of us desperate for the return of sanity to our national political discourse.

Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Cohen talks to investigative reporter & author Peter Geoghegan, the UK's leading journalist exposing the dark money and cash from right wing extremist billionaires that's been driving UK politics since the ill-fated 2016 Brexit referendum.

Peter @PeterKGeoghegan explains how Donald Trump's election victories, Brexit and the failed Liz Truss experiment have helped fuel a crackpot anglocentric extremist right wing movement that has taken root either side of the Atlantic. In London, Tufton Street so-called "think tanks" a-wash with dark money mainly from U.S. billionaires and corporations have been influencing UK politics - helping to drive a number of right wing culture wars from climate denial & Europe to Ukraine and the NHS.

This UK-U.S. phenomena was recently best exposed by the "National Conservatism Conference" in London in May 2023 which heard from a number of extreme right voices from either side of the Pond. Peter tells Nick: "You have a growing link between that sort of Trumpist right, the MAGA right, and ... the Right to the Conservative Party, Robert Jenrick, Liz Truss, people like that, all have strong links."

Peter says even if Trump stooge Elon Musk does not or cannot make good on his promise to bung Nigel Farage & his Reform gang a reported £100 million, the story has already boosted the radical right in the UK.

But Peter is despondent about the prospects of stopping foreign cash fuelling extremist politics in the UK. The Tories castrated the Electoral Commission, & Sir Keir Starmer shows no appetite to tackle the issue. Peter says Labour will reportedly not change electoral law because it "could stoke populism" if the government is seen to react to the threat posed by Trump, Musk & Farage. Peter adds, "I think is a completely crazy position to take, to say that we're not going to do something that we are actually philosophically in favour of ...because it, it might create a couple of bad headlines.

Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 dials up Washington to speak to namesake & fellow commentator Ben Cohen, editor of The Daily Banter website @thedailybanter about the coming Trumpian Terror, that starts in earnest following this week's presidential inauguration. The world is likely to witness the emergence of the U.S. as the world's biggest banana republic, headed by a billionaire oligarchy out-going President Joe Biden warned us all about.

Ben expects a revanchist reign of Terror from Donald Trump, with a purge of his enemies in the judicial system, the media, government and possibly even the military. '"There was a hit list ... that was just being shared in right wing circles," says Ben Cohen ." We know that the federal government is going to be raised from top to bottom of anybody they perceived as being loyal to Biden or the Democrats."

Ben says it's likely that politicians, military and government employees will be forced to an oath of loyalty to Trump, just as nobles and peasants were forced to sign oaths to medieval monarchs. Ben thinks this will also involve signing up to the biggest, baddest lie of all - that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" by the Democrats. Ben adds, "I do know that a lot of people I know in government are busy, wiping their online profiles...because they're very worried about what the incoming administration is going to be doing." 

The new Trumpian dystopia will descend very rapidly, says Ben. We can expect mass deportations of immigrants, attempts by Elon Musk to slash government spending by a staggering 80 per cent and a series of trade wars sparked by Trumpian tariffs. "It's going to be worse than you think it could possibly be," is Ben's grim prediction. He adds, "we are in uncharted territory and we are in with a government that is more radical than any government that I've seen in my lifetime, at least in America. I can't think of...and that's including the first Trump administration And that was generally a failure - the first Trump administration -because they weren't organised. But this is different." 

Read Ben's The Banter Substacks here and listen to his podcasts here.

Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This week Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 talks with Steve Richards @steverichards14, political commentator, author, broadcaster & historian about the threat posed to the Labour government by in-coming U.S. president Donald Trump & the menagerie of far-right weirdos like Elon Musk who has been launching a barrage of inflammatory tweets at the government since last Summer.

Steve and Nick explore the post-war history of the U.S. - UK relationship which hit a severe low during the 1956 Suez crisis. But Steve says the threat posed by Trump & his gang was "much more dangerous." Eisenhower's administration was recognisably stolid & solid; Trump's government of MAGA nutjobs & fanatics looks set to be even worse than his first administration. The inauguration is only days away and already Trump has threatened to annex Canada, Greenland and the Panama canal! Brexit and Trump have made UK isolated from Europe & the U.S. "The British electorate has changed dramatically," says Steve. So, Starmer must be bold in dealing with the UK's isolation and continue rebuilding the country's relationship with Europe. Starmer's caution "isn't working", says Steve, adding, "it's risky being cautious, but they haven't realised that."

Steve says it's clear the Tories, particularly Kemi Badenoch & Robert Jenrick, have decided to throw their lot in with Trump/Musk & help them attack the government. "They have made a decision & they are going to ride these bonkers wild waves as much as possible," says Steve in relation to the the latest Musk X assaults including his deranged libels against Starmer over grooming gangs. Steve says of today's Tories: "they're a revolutionary party now...they're not the party of one nation kind of moderates."

Steve is an accomplished political commentator, author & podcaster. His latest book Turning Points: Crisis and Change in Modern Britain, from 1945 to Truss is published by Macmillan & his regular podcast Rock and Roll Politics is a must listen.

Read Nick Cohen's regular and compelling Substack column Writing from London

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Nick Cohen talks to Andrew Gawthorpe - historian, substacker and researcher of the modern and contemporary United States at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands - about Donald Trump's cataclysmic first week in the White House.

The first week of Trump's 2nd presidency is turning out to be an even bigger disaster than anyone feared. With pardons for violent thugs and unprovoked threats against traditional allies, the U.S. is rapidly turning into the world's first banana republic super power!

Trump has issued pardons for a notorious international drug dealer, a man convicted of possessing child pornography and hundreds of violent extremists convicted for the January 6th attack on the Capitol. He has spread chaos and fear throughout the government, firing senior federal officials and even nobbling cancer research, as well as initiating initiated trumped-up investigations into the Biden administration. He has even threatened to abolish the country's federal dIsaster response body, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. Trump has also given officials unprecedented authority to expedite deportations for up to one million immigrants who entered the country with government authorisation through two key Biden-era programmes.

Trump has already threatened allies - notably Denmark over Greenland - and predictably made threatening noises about aid to Ukraine. He has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords and the World Heath Organisation. Monstrously, he has suggested ethnically cleansing Gaza of Palestinians and dumping them in Egypt and Jordan. He's slapped 25% tariffs on Columbia for refusing planeloads of deported illegal immigrants. And all this before the end of his first weekend!

Andrew Gawthorpe @andygawt explains an increasingly bat-shit U.S. to his baffled readers in his highly thought of Substack column America Explained.

Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.