The Lowdown from Nick Cohen – Details, episodes & analysis

Send us a text

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.

Support the show

Listen to The Lowdown from Nick Cohen for in-depth analysis of the issues and events that shape our lives and futures. From Ukraine to Brexit, from Trump to the Tories - we hope to keep you informed - and sane! @NickCohen4

Send us a text

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.

Support the show

Listen to The Lowdown from Nick Cohen for in-depth analysis of the issues and events that shape our lives and futures. From Ukraine to Brexit, from Trump to the Tories - we hope to keep you informed - and sane! @NickCohen4

Send us a text

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?

Support the show

Listen to The Lowdown from Nick Cohen for in-depth analysis of the issues and events that shape our lives and futures. From Ukraine to Brexit, from Trump to the Tories - we hope to keep you informed - and sane! @NickCohen4

Send us a text

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. 

Support the show

Listen to The Lowdown from Nick Cohen for in-depth analysis of the issues and events that shape our lives and futures. From Ukraine to Brexit, from Trump to the Tories - we hope to keep you informed - and sane! @NickCohen4

Send us a text

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?

Support the show

Listen to The Lowdown from Nick Cohen for in-depth analysis of the issues and events that shape our lives and futures. From Ukraine to Brexit, from Trump to the Tories - we hope to keep you informed - and sane! @NickCohen4

Send us a text

Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Professor Rob Ford of Manchester University on the epic civil war looming in a 2024 general election on the radical right of British politics between the Tories and Nigel Farage's latest vehicle for fantasy politics - Reform.

Brexit, Liz Truss, crippling interest rate rises, a flat-lining economy  with booming immigration, and the cost of living crisis are just a few of the disasters visited on the UK by the radical right since the 2016 EU referendum.

Rob explains the differences between the far right right and the radical right. Rob, a leading academic and author of Revolt on the Right, explains how the Tories are caught on the horns of a dilemma. 

Do the Tories continue apeing Faragist politics and continue to alienate traditional middle class Tory voters in the key battlegrounds of the Home Counties? Or do they try to tack to the centre and upset the ageing crackpots in their constituency parties and their Red Wall working class one-time Brexit supporters?  Are they in danger of alienating both groups and everyone else in between?

Support the show

Listen to The Lowdown from Nick Cohen for in-depth analysis of the issues and events that shape our lives and futures. From Ukraine to Brexit, from Trump to the Tories - we hope to keep you informed - and sane! @NickCohen4

Send us a text

Nick Cohen gets the end of the year Lowdown from author, historian and novelist James Hawes as both contemplate the prospects of a general election in 2024.

The last 13-14 years of Tory misrule has brought the successive disasters of austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson, the Great Covid Bungle,  Lettuce Truss , the  so called Cost of Living Crisis, a crisis hugely exacerbated by Brexit. The list goes on and on - but Nick and James hope that won't apply to the Tories.

Nick is more hopeful of the electoral wipe-out the Tories richly deserve but James is more cautious,  believing that somehow the tribal English Tory vote will rally to the clarion lies of The Daily Mail  - despite the obvious weirdness of Rishi Sunak and the cataclysmic mis-governance .of the last 13 and a half years

Both agree the defeat of the Tories - now little more than an English nationalist party - isimperative  if the UK is to rescued from its dizzying descent to poverty and irrelevance or even saved in its current form.

Support the show

Listen to The Lowdown from Nick Cohen for in-depth analysis of the issues and events that shape our lives and futures. From Ukraine to Brexit, from Trump to the Tories - we hope to keep you informed - and sane! @NickCohen4

Send us a text

Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from barrister and writer Colin Yeo on the Tories' never ending Rwanda farce and the dog's breakfast they have made of the UK's asylum & immigration regime.

When the UK flounced out of the European Union, it also walked away from a returns policy that meant asylum seekers could be returned to the first safe EU country they arrived in.

Now the Tories are stuck with the preposterous and performatively cruel policy of exporting refugees to Rwanda which they desperately hope will deter future asylum seekers.  However,  they have  been thwarted by the courts so far. Now, they squabble among themselves about how to get their madcap scheme off the ground and dream of getting just one refugee on the plane to Kigali!

Support the show

Listen to The Lowdown from Nick Cohen for in-depth analysis of the issues and events that shape our lives and futures. From Ukraine to Brexit, from Trump to the Tories - we hope to keep you informed - and sane! @NickCohen4

Send us a text

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?

Support the show

Listen to The Lowdown from Nick Cohen for in-depth analysis of the issues and events that shape our lives and futures. From Ukraine to Brexit, from Trump to the Tories - we hope to keep you informed - and sane! @NickCohen4

Send us a text

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.

Support the show

Listen to The Lowdown from Nick Cohen for in-depth analysis of the issues and events that shape our lives and futures. From Ukraine to Brexit, from Trump to the Tories - we hope to keep you informed - and sane! @NickCohen4