Podcast appearances and mentions of Nick Cohen

Authoritarian Tactics in Western DemocraciesNick Cohen and Ben Cohen discuss the tactics of authoritarian leaders, comparing them to successful torturers who exploit vulnerabilities in Western democracies. Nick emphasises that liberal democracies often turn a blind eye to illegal immigrants due to the logistical challenges of enforcing strict immigration laws, which he argued is a weakness that authoritarian leaders like Trump exploit to consolidate power. Ben agreed with Nick's analysis. They also briefly touched on the importance of avoiding formal conversations by not reviewing questions in advance.Immigration Policy and Political PolarisationBen discusses the complex dynamics of immigration policy and its role in American politics, particularly focusing on how Trump's immigration policies and the left's response are contributing to a polarised environment. Ben argues that the left's protests against ICE raids lack strategic direction and may inadvertently play into Trump's hands by validating his claim of a national emergency. He expresses concern that this situation could serve as a dry run for Trump's potential re-election strategy in 2028, where he might use similar tactics to claim the need for extended military involvement to "save the Republic."Left's Ineffective Fascism Fight StrategyBen talks about the current political climate in the United States, focusing on the lack of hope for a free and fair election in 2028 due to insufficient reforms on the left and the resistance's inability to address political realities such as immigration. They agreed that calling the government fascist is appropriate, but the left's overuse of the term has made it meaningless. Ben expressed concern that the left's approach to fighting fascism is ineffective, as they have alienated many people by incorrectly labelling others as fascists in the past.Trump's Impact on American DemocracyBen describes the current state of American democracy under Trump's presidency, expressing concerns about the erosion of democratic norms and the potential for further authoritarian tendencies. They highlighted the lack of checks and balances, comparing the situation to historical examples of weak democracies, and warned about the dangers of a Trump victory in 2028. They also touched on the role of Trump's base, his control over the Republican Party, and the implications for the future of American democracy.Media Polarisation and Political DivideBen and Nick discuss the current state of media and politics, particularly focusing on the challenges posed by the "woke left" and the rise of authoritarianism on the right. They agreed that many journalists and politicians are prioritising audience capture and contrarianism over principles, leading to a lack of meaningful debate and criticism, especially on the right in Britain. Ben expressed concern about the direction of the country under Trump, highlighting immigration raids as a potential indicator of future authoritarian measures, and called for a unified resistance from the left.Read all about it!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.

Global Political Challenges and PredictionsNick Cohen and John Sweeney discuss the current state of global politics, focusing on the challenges faced by powerful leaders like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. They highlight the recent audacious drone attacks by Ukraine on Russian strategic bomber fleets, which John Sweeney compared to calling out the "Emperor in the Kremlin with no clothes." John expresses caution about predicting the downfall of dictators, citing his past experiences with Mugabe,Putin's Downfall and Ukraine's WarJohn and Nick discuss the current situation in Russia and Ukraine, focusing on Vladimir Putin's leadership and the potential for his overthrow. Sweeney shares Owen's argument that there are 3 tests before Putin's downfall: the lack of a viable successor, a crashing economy, and a competent government.Putin's Influence on Trump John also talks about the potential influence of Putin on Trump, referencing the Steele dossier (written by former Mi6 officer Christopher Steele.) They agree that while the dossier's claims about Trump's personal behaviour could not be proven, the allegations about Putin's intervention in the 2016 US election were accurate. John highlights the importance of understanding the geopolitical implications of Ukraine's drone attack on Russia, emphasising the need for a realistic approach to global politics.Trump's Waning Influence and ChallengesJohn talks about the complex relationship between Trump and Putin, highlighting a potential compromise involving Trump's authoritarian leanings and shared worldview with Putin, despite effective sanctions against Russia that only Congress can repeal. He explained that Trump's chaotic tariff policy and proposed fiscal measures are damaging the real American economy, reducing his political capital to influence events in Ukraine. They also discuss Trump's mini-me Nigel Farage and Reform councils taking down the Ukrainian flagUkraine's War & British PoliticsJohn discusses the military situation in Ukraine, noting that while Russian drones are causing problems for Ukraine, the country's huge size means it can retreat significantly before the situation becomes catastrophic. He expressed optimism that Ukraine will win the war, citing the support from the West.Read all about it!John @johnsweeneyroar is a distinguished broadcaster and author. His latest book is Murder in the Gulag the explosive account of how Putin poisoned Alexei Navalny. Another of John's most recent must reads is best-seller on Putin, The Killer in the Kremlin, published by Headline Press.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.

UK Economic Stagnation AnalysisNick Cohen @NickCohen4 talks to Simon Nixon @Simon_Nixon discussed the UK's economic stagnation since 2008, highlighting the impact of financial sector reliance, austerity policies, and Brexit. They analysed Keir Starmer's recent EU trade deal, noting modest improvements but emphasising its limited impact on addressing broader economic challenges. Simon suggested that deeper EU integration could yield greater economic benefits, while Andrew questioned whether rejoining the EU would be politically feasible.Businesses Navigate Political Party ChallengesNick Cohen & Simon Nixon discuss the challenges businesses face in aligning with political parties, particularly the Conservative Party, due to its current opposition to policies beneficial for business, such as the Brexit deal and trade agreements with India. They noted that businesses may seek alternatives to advance their agendas, given the presence of multiple parties in the political landscape. Simon highlighted the economic impact of the recent National Insurance rise, which was implemented to fund social care but has been met with skepticism and uncertainty about its long-term effects on employment and inflation.Economic Policy Challenges and SolutionsSimon and Nick discussed the challenges of economic policy, particularly the reliance on low tax rates and central banks to stimulate growth. They agreed that raising taxes is necessary to reduce debt and ease pressure on central banks, as seen in both the UK and US.Economic Challenges in UK and USThe discussion focused on the economic challenges facing both the UK and the US, with Simon Nixon highlighting how Liz Truss's fiscal policies have left limited room for manoeuver before requiring tax increases or spending cuts. Nixon compared the US situation under Donald Trump, noting that while Trump's tax cuts were temporary, his administration is now pushing through a budget that would increase the deficit by $3.3 trillion over the next decade, primarily to prevent tax rates from rising.Global Economic Challenges and ReformsSimon discussed the global economic challenges facing various countries, including Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, emphasising that no country has a perfect solution. He highlighted the impact of technology, particularly AI, on employment and the need for bold administrative reforms to improve state management. Simon also touched on the Labour Party's sudden rise to power and the lack of comprehensive plans upon taking office, noting the difficulty of implementing significant reforms while in government.Read all about!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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Cohen talks to Russia expert Ian GarnerNick Cohen and Dr Ian Garner discussed the impact of Vladimir Putin on global affairs and the ongoing war in Ukraine, with Ian highlighting the strict government control, lack of free speech, and severe punishments for dissent in Russia. They also discussed the economic impact of the war, the rise of fascism in Russia, and the Russian government's propaganda tactics. The conversation ended with a discussion on the political landscape in Russia, the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and the cultural and historical factors that contribute to Russia's inclination towards war.Putin's Impact on Global AffairsNick Cohen introduces the podcast "The Lowdown" and welcomes guest Ian Garner, an academic authority on Russia. They discuss the impact of Vladimir Putin on global affairs and the ongoing war in Ukraine. Ian explains that despite Russia suffering an estimated 900,000 casualties in the war, the country hasn't fallen apart due to strict government control, lack of free speech, and severe punishments for dissent.Political Prisoners in Putin's RussiaIan discussed the increasing number of political prisoners in Putin's Russia, surpassing the Soviet Union's post-Stalin era. He highlighted the return of old techniques like psychiatric institutions and show trials, and the lack of a fair legal system in Russia. Ian also touched on the militarization of Russian culture, both historically and under the Putin regime, and the government's strategy of bribing people to join the military.Rise of Fascism in RussiaIan and Nick discussed the rise of fascism in Russia, tracing its roots to the late Soviet era when dissident groups emerged, including neo-Nazi and nationalist movements. They noted the disappointment of many Russians with the experience of democracy in the 1990s, which led to the rise of a nationalist, irredentist, and revanchist bloc.Russian Propaganda Tactics and ControlIan discussed the Russian government's propaganda tactics, including creating multiple narratives to shape public opinion and reality. He noted that these tactics are effective, despite being crude, and that they allow the government to maintain control and manipulate public perception. Ian also compared the current situation to the aftermath of the Soviet-Afghan war, where similar tactics were used to control public opinion.Read all about it!Dr Ian Garner @irgarner is professor of Russia, war, propaganda @ Pilecki Institute & author of Z Generation: Russia's Fascist Youth. His next book -co-authored - Russia and Modern Fascism is out August 5th.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.

The Tories face extinction as a political forceIn the meeting, Nick Cohen and Nick Tyrone, author, activist and political commentator, discussed the potential demise of the Conservative party in the UK. They highlighted the party's ideological confusion and complacency as major factors contributing to their decline. Nick suggested that the Conservative party might be losing its way intellectually and ideologically, and that they are complacent about their situation. They also discussed the rise of the radical right in the form of Nigel Farage's Reform party and the potential impact on the Conservative party. The conversation ended with a discussion on the need for the Conservative party to offer an alternative to the Reform party and the importance of having a strong leader to lead the party forward.Tories' Leadership and Strategy CritiqueThe two Nicks discuss Kemi Badenoch's leadership and strategy for the Tories. Nick Tyrone criticised Kemi's performance, stating she was not good at politics and had a fatal flaw in her strategy. He argued that her focus on culture issues was the wrong approach, as the Tories needed to rebuild their image as competent and pro-business. Nick Tyreone also suggested that Kemi's strategy was the opposite of what the Tories needed to succeed.Conservative Party's Potential Dissolution DiscussedBoth Nicks discuss the potential for the Conservative party to dissolve into the Reform party, led by Nigel Farage, due to their shared right-wing ideologies. They argued that the Conservative party's failure to articulate a unique reason for its existence in the current political climate could lead to its demise.Farage's Departure and Reform Party's FutureThey then discuss the potential impact of Nigel Farage's departure on the Reform Party's momentum. They agreed that Farage's personality cult is crucial to the party's success, and his absence could lead to its collapse.The Tories' grisly dilemmaNick Tyrone says the Tory Party face a grisly dilemma if it decides it has blown its ill-deserved credentials for being the party of business and economic competence thanks to Brexit and Liz Truss. He explains, "If that's the case, just make, just do whatever you need to do with Farage. Make Farage the leader of the conservative party. Melt the conservative party into Reform all the conservative party and just become. Just make Reform the one like right wing vehicle in the country, because that's gonna be more electorally efficient if there's no reason to exist. And what's happening is they are being crushed on one end by the Lib Dems and crushed on the other end by Reform, and they don't appeal to either group. "Read all about it!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.

UK's Electoral System Challenges Naomi Smith, Chief Executive of Best for Britain, discusses the challenges of the UK's first-past-the-post electoral system and its impact on political strategies. She points out that the system is no longer working effectively for the two main parties, with recent elections showing candidates winning with as little as 22-25% of the vote.This situation has led to discussions about whether major parties should try to appeal to their core supporters or attempt to win over voters from other parties. Naomi emphasises the need for a new approach to address the limitations of the current electoral system.Brexit's Impact on UK Economy and PoliticsNaomi and Nick discussed the impact of Brexit on the UK economy and the political landscape. Naomi highlighted the fragmentation of voter preferences, with people switching from Labour to Reform UK and the Greens. She noted that Labour's inability to deliver progressive economic policies was hurting their appeal. Nick criticised Nigel Farage for the economic consequences of Brexit, but Naomi points out that the media rarely questions Reform UK's policies beyond Brexit. They agreed that politicians need to lead the conversation and not just react to past elections.UK Politics: Fragmentation and ChallengesThe discussion focuses on the current state of UK politics, particularly the Conservative Party's struggles and the rise of Reform UK. Naomi says that the political landscape is fragmented, with different parties leading in various regions. She notes that Labour needs to provide a compelling vision to motivate progressive voters. The conversation also touches on the potential for a "regressive alliance" between Conservatives and Reform UK, and the need for Labour to deliver meaningful change if they win the next election.Labour's Strategy and Progressive Party RelationsThe discussion focuses on the Labour Party's current strategy and its relationship with other progressive parties. Naomi suggests that Labour is losing more votes to the Liberal Democrats, SNP, and Green Party than to Reform UK. She also mentions internal concerns within the Labour Party about the proposed Welfare Bill, which could increase poverty and break manifesto promises. The conversation then shifts to the Green Party's perspective, with Naomi stating that Green Party leaders feel Labour is arrogant and unwilling to engage in discussions about combating the far right. The Greens' decision to run more candidates in the last election is attributed to a lack of reciprocation from Labour for their previous cooperation. Naomi expressed optimism about Britain's future, emphasising the need to address issues such as stagnant wages and declining public services. Read all about it!Naomi Smith is one of the country's most incisive commentators on politics & the UK-Europe relationship. She can also be found on Bluesky . Naomi is also a seasoned podcaster, co-hosting the Quiet Riot Pod, the politics podcast with more passion, less shouting & lots of laughter. 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.

Tech billionaires' paradoxical political support of TrumpNick Cohen and Quinn Slobodian,@zeithistoriker, the Canadian author and academic, discuss the paradoxical behaviour of American libertarians, particularly tech billionaires, who have been supporting Donald Trump despite his policies contradicting their beliefs in free trade, limited state interference, and unrestricted business operations. Quinn, a professor of international history at Boston University, introduced his book "Hayek's Bastards: The Neoliberal Roots of the Populist Right," which explores the roots of the modern radical right and helps understand why these individuals seem to make little sense.Neoliberalism's Shift From Globalism to AuthoritarianismQuinn discusses the origins of neoliberal thought and libertarianism in the aftermath of the Habsburg Empire's collapse. He highlighted the Universalist project of Friedrich Hayek, Wilhelm Rupka, and Ludwig von Mises to rebuild the world economy. Quinn also explains how the consensus of globalism started to unravel in the 1990s, leading to a shift in libertarian Universalism towards human differences and acceptance of authoritarian partnerships. He uses the figure of Peter Thiel to illustrate this transformation.Silicon Valley's Libertarian escapism and governmentQuinn discusses the convergence of Silicon Valley escapism and libertarianism, highlighting the story of California and its influence on libertarianism. He also touched on the role of the government in supporting the tech industry, particularly in the development of the Internet. Nick agrees with Quinn's points and added that the hippie movement also sought to reduce the power of the state over the individual.Ultra-rich influence on American societyQuinn and Nick discuss the influence of the ultra-rich on American society. Quinn argued that the ultra-rich have abandoned the need to buy legitimacy, which is a warning sign. Nick suggests that the ultra-rich are not as concerned with America as they should be, and that they are more sanguine about Trump's actions. Quinn also mentioned that the ultra-rich are constantly seeking security and are leaning into the dynamics of capitalist competition. Nick concludes that the ultra-rich are willing to use any means to defeat their perceived enemies, including burning down American cultural institutions.Read all about it!Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.Quinn Slobodian is a Canadian author & historian specialising in modern Germany and international history. He is currently Professor of International History at Boston University. His latest book is Hayek's bastards: The Neoliberal roots of the Populist Right. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Cohen talks about defending values and rights against a resurgent culture of intolerance & extremism as exemplified by the Trump White House with leading philosopher & author professor A.C.Grayling @acgrayling How do do we defend those values and rights in a new world of social media and culture warfare?This is the 2nd part of a 2-part interview with Professor Grayling.Rights retreat with resurgence of radicalised right How do we defend our rights against an aggressive authoritarian radicalised right? For years, it seemed that long term issues such as racism, and discrimination had been in retreat - bit sadly no longer. How do we all stand up for our values while avoiding the obvious so-called "Woke" booby traps?Rights versus interestsA.C. Grayling discusses the battle as being between rights and interests, summarising, "The culture wars are between people who are demanding the rights that would result in their having full inclusion of full acceptance in society on an equitable basis on the one hand and on the other hand, people who were defending their interests, which historically have been interests of privilege... this is a fight between rights and interests. And we all have interests. and interest in not being offended by other people, but we don't have a right not to be offended."We all have an interest in being able to have our say, but we also have a right to have our say. So, you know, here again, we see how important it is to distinguish between what counts as a right and what is, as it were only an interest because it is the people who are defending their interests. who have to do the hard work of accepting that other people are genuinely owed their rights."Finding the right language to defend valuesA.C.Grayling stresses the importance of finding the right language to make our values heard above the heat and smoke of battle, adding, "Finding some way to discuss these things and to navigate them is tremendously important. And that only comes if there is goodwill and clear understanding on both sides and in the fevered state of the debate at the moment, particularly in view of the fact that it is really the language and and the perceptions of people on the further wings of both sides of this debate, which seem to be constitutive of the debate that makes it impossible to get real progress going on the substance of the debate."Read all about it!Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.A.C. Grayling's book Discriminations: Making peace in the culture wars is now out as paperback. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Whither or wither NATO?Nick Cohen and Phillips P.O'Brien, the academic, author & military historian, discuss the current state of NATO and the Western alliance, with a focus on the US security guarantee to Europe and the impact of the American right's ideology on international relations. They also explored the potential trust between Trump and Putin, the implications of reduced American aid to Ukraine, and the implications of the US pivoting from Europe to face China's aggression. They also discuss the dilemma faced by an isolated Brexit Britain, hopelessly trying to face towards a Trumpist US and the European Union at the same time,Trump is selling out its allies - bigly!Phillips says Europe cannot accept the evidence of its own eyes and ears: that Trump is completely selling out its allies: "I despair. As you probably know from reading my stuff at times, I've been trying to scream about this for over a year. Europe had to get ready and Britain had to get ready for this."An isolated UK trying to ride 2 horses at once faces irrelevancePhillips urged the UK to stop tying to ride 2 horses at once and plots its future with Europe. He says, "The old system is gone. It's not coming back. And I would start with almost a blank sheet of paper and re-assume what Britain needs for its own security and that will be European focused... if Britain doesn't, it'll get left behind by the European states that do. I mean, Britain won't actually instantly collapse, but it will just become more irrelevant .. it always like to think it could have a, a foot in both camps, but it might end up with a foot in neither." Trump doesn't give a **** about Europe or the UKPhillips says the The Trump White House isn't interested in some kind of special relationship with Brexit Britain where the UK plays an important role, adding, "This really seems to be all, maybe Trump will change his mind or maybe, you know, he'll have too many Big Mac and the Republican party will reverse revert to what it was. But it's astonishing 'cause it is a wilful inability to look after your own interests."And Trumpist Tories have a big image problem says Phillips: "you can't be pro-Trump, unless you're pro Putin as well ... which is maybe a position that many in the conservative party are trying to circle."Trump wants populists to take over EuropePhillips says the MAGA White House has a sinister objective: it wants populists to take over Europe. He adds, This is their goal to have a populist takeover in Europe. So they would like Europe to be sort of different populist states not working in action, but being basically a bunch of, populist cutthroats, corrupt cutthroats making deals with Trump in the United States... Their plan is to break European Union unity."Read all about it!Read Phillips' own regular Substack column - Phillips's Newsletter. Phillips is also professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews.Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 regular Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond is another must-read. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

1st part of 2-part interview with Professor A.C. GraylingNick Cohen talks about cancel culture with leading philosopher & author Professor A.C.Grayling @acgrayling This is the first part of a 2-part interview with Professor Grayling.Radicalised Right labels all opponents as "Woke"Emboldened by Trump, Brexit & Trump, a Radical Right on-the-rampage seeks to justify its own prejudices and failures by labelling its opponents as "woke". A.C. Grayling tells Nick, "the term political correctness was a pejorative term as woke has become now in the vocabulary of the right..."Pogroms, oppression, discrimination - cancelling has a long and sorry historyA.C. Grayling says there's nothing new about discriminatory cancelling, adding cancellation is really one of the major forces of recent history, saying "one group trying to cancel another...By means of wars or pogroms or, you know, exclusions or, or oppressive laws and so on...it is just the story of history."We look for example, at the phenomenon of caste in India, and we see that as a massive systematic and systemic is history long cancellation of whole groups of people."The online Cancel Culture Club is threatening free speechSocial media has made it easier for the authoritarians of both left and right to cancel & penalise people for expressing their views. He adds, "apart from all the other reasons why allowing free expression is so important. Without it, you can't have a process at law. You can't recuse and defend, you can't have politics. You can't propose policies or, or analyse them and challenge them."You can't have an education system if you can't freely pass on information and analyse it and discuss it."Read all about it!Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.A.C. Grayling's book Discriminations: Making peace in the culture wars is now out as paperback. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Cohen talks with Guardian political columnist and author Rafael Behr, @rafelbehr, a Lowdown regular, about Sir Keir Starmer, and asks Raf can the prime minister face down an erratic and increasingly unhinged US president?Labour's Comms issues and a hazardous future aheadRafael says Sir Keir Starmer needs to communicate properly with the British public about how it negotiates the dangerous future ahead, "They seem completely unable just to narrate what they're doing and why they're doing it in a way that would lead people to accept. and get on board with and be patient with ... And that is true of the fiscal situation, and it's true of the geo-strategic situation."Is Starmer the Right Stuff to handle Trump & the Radical Right?Raf says many Brits understand the predicament that Starmer finds himself in with a hostile Trump, adding "They understand he's the prime minister. He can't just go and, and sort of piss all over the American president on live television. But no one seriously intuits that they are kindred spirits or alike..."Starmer best PM we've gotRaf thinks Starmer is the best prime minister we've got adding "Constitutionally the alternative is Kemi Badenoch and the per, and if it's not her, it would've been Robert Jenrick with Farage in the wngs. And you look at most countries in the world, and he wouldn't swap him out for anyone who's actually there available. So from that point of view, he is the right leader for the times."Bye bye Badenoch!Raf & Nick discuss the state of UK politics, include the current dire Tory leadership. Raf says he's "pretty confident" than Kemi Badenoch will. not be leading the Tories into the next general election.Read all about itRafael'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. His X handle is @rafaelbehrNick 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.

The jig is up for serial bull-shit merchant Nigel FarageNick Cohen talks to Chris Grey @chrisgreybrexit - author, brexit expert and emeritus professor of organisation studies about where the madness of Donald Trump and his MAGA cult have left their supporters among Britain's Radical Right con artists, such as Nigel Farage, leader of Reform.By continuing their slavish obeisance to the US's crazed would be emperor Donald Trump, the UK's Radical Right and its leaders including Farage risk alienating those of his supporters who support Ukraine's existential fight against Putin and are coming to loath Trump and his reckless clown car administration.Even tricksy Farage can't carry on riding 2 horses at once!Chris Grey, one of the UK's leading experts on Brexit, says Nigel Farage and his radical right fellow-travellers have been badly caught out by Donald Trump's full fledged assault on the West. Farage's always far-fetched strategy of a brexit Brtiain forming some anglo-centric alliance with the US lies in tatters; Brexit has only further isolated the UK as the US turns its face away from Europe and throws its support behind the UK's enemies such as Putin's Russia. The UK is also now dangerously stranded between 2 stools.Read all about itChris Grey is Emeritus Prof of Organisation Studies @RoyalHolloway, ex-Prof @Cambridge_Uni & @Warwickuni. Mainly analysis of Brexit (& related). @chrisgrey on BSky. Chris is also the author of Brexit Unfolded: How no one got what they wanted (and why they were never going to)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 discusses Labour with Polly ToynbeeNick Cohen talks to the distinguished author and Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee about Labour's tough love strategy - targeting the welfare state and benefits to fill the black hole left by the Tories and Brexit."Not a very Labour thing to do" - And Keynes would not approve!Polly agreed with Former shadow chancellor Ed Balls' recent observation on the government's plan to cut disability benefits, describing the strategy on his own podcast as "not a very Labour thing to do."Polly - the proud owner of a portrait of the great economist John Maynard Keynes - says, "You know, you don't keep digging. You invest into a crisis and pay back when growth is restored. but she [Chancellor Rachel Reeves] seems to abandon that ..." Polly adds, "there's always this fear, and particularly for Labour, because Labour is less trusted by the markets and the business world; they're more inclined to suspect them of profligacy..."Polly says that Labour could raise an immediate £40 billion by simply imposing a 1 per cent wealth tax on the people worth in excess of £10 millionPolly and Nick also discuss the impact of the proposed welfare cuts on Labour's electoral base, and how Sir Keir Starmer should navigate the UK's foreign policy, particularly its relationship with Europe and an increasingly erratic and disturbing United States.Read all about itPolly Toynbee @pollytoynbee is a Guardian columnist, formerly BBC social affairs editor. Her recent book An Uneasy inheritance, my family and other radicals was published in 2023 by W.F.Howes Ltd. She's also the co-author, along with David Walker, of The only way is up: The way forward for British politics, again published by W.F. Howes Ltd in 2024.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.

Former government behavioural warning - social media is now a tool of the authoritarians Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 chats with behavioural scientist and author Justin Hempson-Jones @JonesHempson about the growing threat posed to our freedom by the sinister merger of government and social media oligarchy, as we're witnessing now in the US with the sinister and toxic partnership of Donald Trump & Elon Musk.Political thugs are poisoning our mindsJustin warns that we have lost control of our information system. An unhealthy alliance of authoritarian politicians and techno-oligarchs now controls our social media ,and the influence pathways to our minds. Justin likens it to bad food, saying, " We know that the food that we constructs, the body that we inhabit for better or worse."And it's roughly the same with our information diets. The information that we ingest from the information environment is going to construct the thoughts and feelings and beliefs that we have, including what it is we think we're supposed to want and achieve out there in the world."Political scammers control the toxin of propaganda Justin describes the many the online propaganda techniques used by politician-authoritarians are like the scams used by digital criminals, adding, "they can more easily understand niche audiences and therefore tell them. what they want to hear...They will deliberately set up a fake infrastructure. So fake personas for example, and, tailor them fake personas...And this is too the type of mechanism that online politicians are using, for example, when they want to influence audiences."Justin makes the clarion call for people to take back control of our information-influence system from the authoritarians and their corrupt techno-oligarchs who currently control it.Read all about itJustin's book warning of this pernicious threat faced by all of us is Influence, Understand it, use it, resist it . It's out in paperback next month but available in hardback now.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 talks to Mike Martin MP- soldier, author and Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge WellsNick Cohen and Mike Martin MP discuss the dramatic & disturbing shifts in international relations and diplomacy, thanks to Donald Trump's apparent volte-face on Ukraine and the United States' traditional allies, particularly in the context of the US and UK.Mike also talks domestic politics - are we witnessing the death of the Tory party as a major political force?The UK needs a political consensus on boosts to defence spendingAs Poland announces plans to make all men undergo military training, Mike Martin MP stresses the need for increased defence expenditure and improved military capabilities in the UK. Nick & Mike also explore the emergence of so-called "progressive patriotism" in Britain, the changing political landscape in traditionally Conservative areas, and the potential consequences of a war on national survival.War involving the UK now more than 50 per cent possible Mike said defence spending should be at least 3.5 per cent of government spending. He estimates that a war involving the UK was now more than 50 per cent possible. The UK & Europe must prepare for the worst.Are we witnessing the strange death of Tory England?Lastly, Mike and Nick discuss the UK's current politics - particularly the appalling state of the Conservative Party - woefully stuck in the No Man's Land between the Reformist Radical Right and the One Nation Tories who've abandoned them largely for the Liberal Democrats as well as Labour and the Greens. Mike says, "The Tories are being crushed between the pincer movement, between the Lib Dems and reform. And they don't know which way to face."Watch out for the County Council elections on May 1st 2025! This could be the key indicator of whether the Tories can recover to become a real party of opposition or could it continue its speedy descent into political oblivion.Mike says "It would be very interesting to see the results ... you might even see the Tory vote collapsing into to, into, into our pile and into the Reform pile."Read all about itMike Martin is the Liberal Democrat MP for Tunbridge Wells and a member of the Commons Defence Committee. A former British Army Office, Mike is a Senior Fellow at King's College London – an expert in geopolitics and conflict – and the author of several books on psychology, conflict and travel, including Why We Fight.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 talks to the author & reporter John Sweeney who is on the ground in KyivNick Cohen and John Sweeney discussed the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the implications of Donald Trump's apparent betrayal of Ukraine - as further revealed by the despicable ambush by Donald Trump & his side kick vice-president J.D.Vance.Trump is now "Leader of the unfree world "John Sweeney talks to Nick about the current situation in Ukraine and compares the current situation there to previous historical events such as to the Hungarian uprising in 1956 and the Prague Spring in 1968. John expresses his deep concern about the betrayal of America's support for Russia. John, who is currently based in Kyiv, shared his observations about the Ukrainian people's resilience and unity behind President Zelenskyy. They also discussed the postponement of elections in Ukraine, drawing parallels with Britain's decision not to hold elections during World War 2. They discuss focus the alarming support of Russia by Trump, now touted as the leader of the "unfree world."Ukraine's growing and under-estimated military prowessJohn talks about Russia's invasion & the potential influence of Russian interference in the US political system, as well as the potential for peace talks and the role of the United States under Trump's leadership.They discuss current geopolitical situation, the potential consequences of Trump's actions, and the resilience of Ukraine in the face of adversity. John also talks of the My Room Clinic with Ukrainian soldiers, the effectiveness of Ukraine's jamming of Russia's glide bomb. Ukraine has made astonishing advances in drone technology- producing approximately 2 million a year and is stockpiling Patriot missiles for future use against potential Russian attacks. Fearing the worst of Trump and his relish for appeasement, President Biden managed to provide huge amounts of military aid before he left office.What does Putin have on Trump?John discusses the revelations and allegations of the so-called Steele dossier - compiled by former Mi6 Moscow desk chief Christopher Steele - and whether the Kremlin has blackmailed Trump into doing its bidding. John says he investigated what turn out to be - so far, at least - unsubstantiated rumours that a Putin ex-mistress later rocked up at Trump Tower where she shacked up with Trump.Read all about itJohn is a distinguished broadcaster and author. His latest book is Murder in the Gulag the explosive account of how Putin poisoned Alexei Navalny. Another of John's most recent must reads is best-seller on Putin, The Killer in the Kremlin, published by Headline Press.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 author, intelligence expert & one-time career diplomat Arthur SnellDonald Trump appears to have unequivocally sided with Vladamir Putin's malignant regime in Moscow and has made clear his intention to fuck over Ukraine, Europe and the UK - jeopardising the security of all and making World War 3 much more likely? How can the West react?It's not too late for Europe & Canada to re-tool but action to boost defence spending needs to happen straight away.A Europe in-denial caught on the hop - Trump pulls the security blanket despite warningsArthur, a one-time career diplomat with the Foreign Office, said the UK was nervous about how EU membership where it impacted the UK's relationship with the U.S before Brexit. This was before the UK was eventually dragged out of the EU together - with Brexiter nutjobs insisting on the hardest separation terms possible. Now brexiter dreams of a transatlantic 'Anglo-sphere' love-in that would replace EU membership has collapsed.Arthur says, "I would say we were warned. Now, what I think what we weren't warned about was we were warned that America was losing interest in Europe, becoming frustrated with the Europeans unwillingness to spend money to defend themselves, and also America realising it had its own fish to fry, if you like, in the Pacific."Of course, what we were not warned, because it really is the most mind boggling aspect of all of this, is having an American president who basically sides with Russia on the big geopolitical issues when it pertains to Europe, and that is the, the sort of utterly horrifying element of, of what's unfolded really in the last few days."Need to act now in Europe's defence before it's too lateNick asks Arthur how he'd be advising Sir Keir Starmer. Arthur says, "I would be advising is that we need to rip up a lot of the basic tenets that underpin our defence and security structures and think very hard and very fast about European security as a single entity. And this isn't about the EU or about NATO. It's about a continent that's called Europe that is geographically pretty distinct."Read all about itArthur Snell's substack column is Not all doom & his regular inciteful podcast is Behind the Lines. Arthur's first not fiction book is How Britain Broke the World: War, Greed and Blunders from Kosovo to Afghanistan, 1997-2022 .Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond. Read Nick's latest column, Can Europe resist Trump's gangsterism? Does it have the willpower to try? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Is our rules-based world finished?This week, Nick Cohen discusses the current & disturbing breakdown in international law - in the week indicted alleged war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu was the first overseas guest of convicted felon President Donald Trump with author & campaigner Steve Crawshaw, the author of the just published Prosecuting the powerful: War crimes & the pursuit of justice.A world run by bad men was never going to improve the international rule of LawDonald Trump, Vladamir Putin & Xi Jinping - let alone their 'mini mes' in Hungary, Israel & elsewhere - are proving a toxic combo' for the maintenance of a new world order that came into being in the wake of the Nuremberg trials. Slobodan Milošević, Ratko Mladić and 19 other individuals have been jailed by the International Criminal Court at The Hague for crimes ranging from genocide to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Bringing powerful political crooks seemed to usher in a new age of international justice. Yet now indicted personalities such as Putin remain at large, while Benjamin Netanyahu is feted by Donald Trump, himself the first convicted felon to occupy the White House.Trump has just issued sanction against the ICC and its senior officials, partly in retaliation for their indictment of Netanyahu!What can we do to stop our world reversing into a new international disorder? Steve Crawshaw argues this is not the time to "hide under the duvet" but to fight back against a tide of authoritarianism and contempt for the international rule of law.Read all about it!Steve Crawshaw @stevecrawshaw reported extensively for decades from Europe. He was in Poland during the rise of Solidarity in Poland, a pivotal event in the fall of the Berlin Wall, and covered the wars in the early 1990s in the former Yugoslavia. Steve has worked subsequently for NGOs, including Amnesty International and Freedom From Torture. He is now a freelance journalist and writer. His latest book, Prosecuting the powerful: War crimes & the pursuit of justice, has published by Little, Brown Book Group.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 talks to Naomi Smith of the campaign group Best for Britain on the dead hand of BrexitOn the fifth anniversary of Brexit, Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 talks with Naomi Smith, @pimllicat chief executive officer of Best for Britain which is campaigning for a re-building of the important relationship the UK once enjoyed with its closest and biggest trading partners in the European Union.Brexit is dead - but long live Brexit!Poll after poll has shown that public confidence in Brexit has all but collapsed. The July 2024 election returned a strong remainer-friendly parliament and yet the Labour government is trying to work with the badly bungled hard Brexit deal inflicted on the country by Boris Johnson and David Frost.Same old Brexit doom loop to appease the same old Brexit nut-jobsNaomi argues that the government can be bolder in re-building the relationship with Europe, so recklessly destroyed by Johnson & co. The country should not allow itself to be trapped with a project that has obviously failed. It seems Brexit is being prosecuted by people who don't believe in it to indulge the extremist nationalist fantasies of the political & media grifters & con artists who argued for for it.The UK can escape the dead hand of Brexit"We are not stuck with it and there is a way out," insists Naomi, who cites reliable recent research showing how Brexit is impoverishing the average Brit by at least £2,000 a year, killing growth, ransacking public services, crippling business with red tape and not only killing growth, but is knocking a massive 4% off annual GDP. (The 2008 Great Recession/crash led to a 2% reduction.)Breaking the Brexit OmertàNamoi said the government is beginning to break the taboo on Brexit, adding, "they are now beginning to talk more openly about how bad the deal that Johnson and Frost negotiated was for the country...They are now beginning to talk more openly about how bad the deal that Johnson and Frost negotiated was for the country. They don't do it ad nauseam."Naomi adds, "People aren't stupid. They've realised that they were sold a load of rubbish, and that their lives weren't going to improve and they can't now see their GP any more easily than they could before we left the EU etc."Naomi Smith is one of the country's most incisive commentators on politics & the UK-Europe relationship. She can also be found on Bluesky . Naomi is also a seasoned podcaster, co-hosting the Quiet Riot Pod, the politics podcast with more passion, less shouting & lots of laughter. 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 Trump with U.S. expert & historian Andrew GawthorpeNick 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.Trump in full Caligula mode at home...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.....And abroad!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!Read all about it!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.

Trump Terror will turn U.S. into world's biggest banana republicNick 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.Revenge is a dish worst served hotBen 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."A new oath of loyalty to "King Donald the First"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." A dystopia of tariffs, deportations and brutal 80% cuts to government spending 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 & hear all about it!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.

Dark money for dark times 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.Brexit & Trump-related funding that have poisoned UK & U.S. politics 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."Farage, Reform and the Elon Musk fanboyPeter 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.Labour doing "sweet F.A" as dark money floods inBut 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.Read all about itPeter Geoghegan's must read Substack is Democracy for Sale & his best selling book Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics is published by W.F.Howes Ltd.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.

Reading the runes for 2025Nick Cohen reads the runes for 2025 with fellow Substackers and writers - Tim Walker @ThatTimWalker and Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone.Early reviews for 2025 are already in, and they're not looking great!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 all about itRead 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.

2024 - That was the year that was!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.Lowdown awards for key people and events of 2024Guests 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 YearRead all about itRead 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.

On this week's episode of NPM Interconnections, host Andrew Burnes is joined by Doral Renewables' CEO and Co-Founder Nick Cohen, VP of Development Jon Baker and VP of Development and Agrivoltaics, Ed Baptista.All three guests have been directly involved in the development of two of the largest projects in the Midwest - Indiana's 1.3 GW Mammoth Solar and Wisconsin's 1.3 GW Vista Sands Solar.The trio discuss the permitting and siting challenges related to developing projects at GW scale and also the interest level in adding storage components to these projects as the technology becomes more viable in the Midwest. Finally, Cohen provides a look ahead to the firm's pipeline in 2025 and whether the firm expects to stick with projects at this scale or change things up moving forward.New Project Media (NPM) is a leading data, intelligence, and events company providing business development led coverage of the US and European renewable energy markets for the development, finance, M&A, and corporate community.Download our mobile app.

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.Labour and Tory failure to tackle Farage is driving Reform surgeSomething 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."Labour has lost focus by listening to focus groupsPeter 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."The extremist far-right former "Tory press" is getting madder & madderPeter 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."We must stand up against insidious takeover of BritainPeter 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 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?A lost truth leading to authoritarianismSocial 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.Social media giants profit hugely from hate - & driving people to extremesConspiracy 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."The West has failed to Musk & social media moguls to accountImran 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."Feeble or no regulation leaves us all exposed to digital hateImran 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.

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.Danger to Tories in being pro-TrumpRafael 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.Starmer needs to be be more assertive & aggressive with the RightRafael @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."The failed revolution of brexit makes Labour's job even tougherRafael @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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.Reform will be the main UK "we love Trump" party 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,"Farage has bigger chance of being PM than BadenochDisturbingly, 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.Trump will pump up Farage & extremist nut jobs of the far rightBoth 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. Brexitist demands for U.S - UK trade deal will remain on fantasy shelfNick 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.

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.

In the first of a special 2 part interview, Nick Cohen and author and political scientist Yascha Mounk explore how centre and left progressives got it so wrong in their fight against Donald Trump and an insurgent radical right.Democrats misread minorities@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."Woke ideology helped win it for TrumpOn 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'"Ditch Woke or carry on losingYascha 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 MENACETom @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 BREXITNick 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 THREATTom 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

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

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

from 2019 - @wariotifo's 2nd and 3rd episodes as co-host, on the neoconservative blog Harry's Place. part 2 previously only available @ patreon.com/reelpolitik. SUBSCRIBE AT PATREON.COM/REELPOLITIK TO HEAR A BRAND NEW EPISODE FT. ORIGINAL CO-HOST TOM FOSTER: https://www.patreon.com/posts/episode-309-mega-114637979 Original episode descriptions: PART ONE: BRING IT ON DOWN TO HARRY'S PLACE Jack is joined by the Reel Politik Podcast's new Director of Strategy & Communications (Mr Seumas Miwne), Geraint (@wariotifo on Twitter), to go back to the mid-00s heyday of the Sensible/Decent Left, the pro-war ideologues who gave us the Euston Manifesto, the website Harry's Place, and various LM Network-style front organisations. We look at how this tendency of the Crank Centre laid the groundwork for much of the centrist hysteria directed today at the Corbynite left for their foreign policy stances, and how they even chillingly predicted many of the concerns & talking points of what would become known as the alt-right. Many stalwart enemies of the show make appearances, such as Nick Cohen and longtime melt enterprise Little Atoms. PowerBase was an invaluable resource when researching this episode (powerbase.info/index.php/Main_Page) and we'd also like to thank our friend Phil BC for some of his writing on Harry's Place and the hated Decents. PART TWO: HARRY'S PISS AND YOU HAVE THE second instalment of our two-parter on the hated Harry's Place, the pro-war shitrag that set the blogosphere alight in the early to mid 2000s. We conclude our discussion on these horrendous hawk bastards - including their hated affiliate Stephen Pollard - before discussing the hated Frank Field's new Birkenhead Social Justice Party and portrayals of class and "the underclass" in cinema. We play the episode out with a song by the legendary Silver Jews, in tribute to the late, and dearly missed, David Berman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Send us a textNick 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 Farages 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.Support the showListen 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 textNick 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 showListen 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

“A lot of people on your podcast became creatives by accident.”Someone messaged me this last week (after listening to four of them back-to-back).I got me thinking; why do creatives become creatives?I'd divide them into two groups.The Lifestyle Brigade™ - attracted by the trappings. (Nothing wrong with that - it's why most people go to work.)And the Expressionists™ - attracted by putting a bit of themselves out into the world.A point of view, an observation, a joke, whatever.Like 90% of creatives, they're likely to be introverts.Advertising, for them, is the conduit to a wider audience.It's not like creating a widget in an ad factory, it's much more personal.Their work reflects the values they live by.They don't find it helpful to patronise, bullshit or lie when talking to people day to day, so they don't do it talking to people via pixels or ink.Dealing with humans on a regular basis, they've found logic, facts, humour and honesty persuade harder.So these are the tools the reach for most often.Nick Cohen is one of the best examples of the Expressionists™.It's hard to think of anyone who's leaned harder into the ‘honest' tool.Nick has just written an excellent book about his fabulous experiment - Mad Dogs and Englishmen.It's a joy.It made me want to get into advertising all over again.We had a great chat about the book, the agency and honesty in advertising.Hope you enjoy it.

Send us a Text Message.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

I spoke to Nick Cohen, veteran political journalist and author of the Writing from London substack https://nickcohen.substack.com/ about the record of the past 14 years of Conservative government and what we might expect from a Labour one. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Send us a Text Message.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.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

We're joined by our great friend, comedian, improviser, and future therapist Nick Cohen. We discuss his date with Lukas in getting him out of a fender bender, how his Covid experience led him to training to be a mental health professional, and when he and Gabby used to do improv with an egomaniac! We want to hear from YOU! Do you have an extraordinary story, a fascinating phobia, an intriguing habit, or a mind-boggling neurosis that deserves its time in the spotlight? Share it with us through this link