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Nick talks with Anne Applebaum, the celebrated American journalist, author and historian about her new book Autocracy Inc., The dictators who want to rule the world, published by Penguin.
Putin, Xi Jinping, Jong Un, Trump, Maduro - dictators great and small - wannabe or real deal - dominate the news space these days. Democracy hasn't been under so much pressure since the 30's and 40's. Anne talks about the forces driving this new age of autocracy and the men with the often little iron fists who want to rule their part of the world. Meanwhile, some are doing their patriotic duty to themselves by enriching themselves at the cost of their country. "L'etat - c'est a moi!"
After seventeen years as a columnist at The Washington Post, Anne became a staff writer at The Atlantic in January 2020. She is the author of five critically acclaimed and award-winning books: Twilight of Democracy, Red Famine, Iron Curtain, Between East and West, and Gulag, winner of the Pulitzer Prize. She divides her time between Poland, where her husband Radoslaw Sikorski is foreign minister, and Washington, D.C.Support the show
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Nick talks to Professor Tim Bale of the Queen Mary University of London, who is widely looked on as the UK's keenest academic observer of the Conservative Party.
Poll after poll indicates a near-extinction event for the Conservative Party on July 4th. The disasters of Brexit, Johnson and Truss coupled with the Tories' tedious and interminable culture wars have long exposed the supposed go-to party of government as more of an electoral suicide cult than anything else.
Tim and Nick discuss the potential scale of defeat for the Tories and whether or not -post-election - they will try to recapture the vote-rich heartlands of the political centre ground or cling to its Farageist-Brexity wet blanket, a strategy that looks guaranteed to condemn them to the fringes of British politics for years to come, and possibly leave them exposed to a Reform Party reverse take-over.
@ProfTimBale 's latest book The Conservative Party after Brexit (published by Polity) charts the Party's dizzying descent into nationalist and radical hard right Brexit populism.
Don't forget to read Nick's regular Substack column Writing from London.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 -
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@NickCohen4 and Guardian political columnist @rafaelbehr discuss the potential for an extinction-level general election result for the Tories on July 4th.
Time and events seem to have caught up with the Conservative Party at last as they face retribution at the hands of an exasperated electorate after 14 years of chaos and 5 prime ministers, plus policy disaster after policy disaster including Brexit, Austerity, the bungling of Covid, the Tufton Street insanity of "Trussonomics", turds in rivers and seas and the endless Rwanda/immigration fiasco. And then there is the serial buffoonery and malfeasance of Boris Johnson.
Rafael and Nick discuss how the Conservatives find themselves beached on political territory between the rabid right they tried and failed to appease and the centre ground where people have become increasingly repelled by Tory incompetence and hard right, populist antics. E.g. Tories may boast of "getting brexit done" but scarcely of brexit itself.
Rafael is one of the Guardian's leading columnists and observers of the political scene. Rafael's book - "Politics - A Survivor's Guide" is published by Atlantic.
Don't forget to read Nick's regular Substack column Writing from London.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 -
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Nick talks to celebrated author, columnist and editor Will Hutton about his new book, This Time No Mistakes: How to Remake Britain (Bloomsbury), described as "a brilliant book" by no less a figure than Sir Keir Starmer.
If Labour wins - as currently expected - how does it pull the UK out of the doom cycle it's been put into by the Tories? Will explains how much work has to be done by Starmer and his team to put the country back on its feet after the Tory-inflicted disasters of austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson and last, but not least, Liz Truss and her notorious mortgage-doubling "mini budget".
How do you re-boot an economy growing when Brexit alone is forecast to eventually knock a ruinous 10 per cent off GDP and when wages have stagnated during 14 years of Tory misrule?Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown on Sir Keir Starmer with the Labour Leader's biographer Tom Baldwin.
Nick asks: WTF is Keir Starmer really?
Tom - @TomBaldwin66 - spent hours with Starmer, his friends and family to investigate the supposed enigma that is the Labour Leader for his book which is just out - Keir Starmer: The Biography, published by William Collins.
Tom, a journalist and former Labour spin doctor, discovered a far more interesting and enigmatic character than the "boring" stiff caricature the Tories and their Fleet Street henchmen are desperate to paint.
Starmer is probably the most working class Labour leader since Harold Wilson and yet the only one to take up the Labour mantel with a knighthood, gifted to him for his stint as Director of Public Prosecutions. Tom finds a man forged by family history and values, decent and kind but utterly ruthless when needs be, and determined to sweep the failed, toxic Tories from office.Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from leading economist Danny Blanchflower CBE - onetime external member of the Bank of England's interest rate-setting Monetary Policy Committee.
Danny foresaw economic woes mounting up in 2007 and predicted a crash - a year or so before the start of the bank collapses that led to the Great Recession.
Since then, the Tories have visited on the country one failed economic project after another - austerity, Brexit, Trussanomics. Now the average Brit is forced to pay what's been called the "Moron Premium" for their chronic incompetence - higher food prices, extortionate energy bills and more expensive mortgages, while a failing economy stagnates in recession.
The Tories have predictably descended into in-fighting and sinister culture wars as they await their inevitable rout at the next election. But what can Labour do to pull the UK economy out of its current death spiral?Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Professor Tim Bale of the Queen Mary University of London, who is widely looked on as the UK's keenest academic observer of the Conservative Party.
The Tories have been left reeling and predictably even more mutinous by their catastrophic defeats in last week's two by-elections in their hitherto safe seats of Kingswood in south Gloucestershire and Wellingborough in north Northamptonshire.
Not only did they lose Kingswood with a 16.4 % swing, where Labour only needed a relatively modest 11-point swing. They also lost Wellingborough, where the swing was 28.5% - the second highest swing from Conservative to Labour in any post-war by-election.
Tim - @ProfTimBale - discusses the shatteringly few options now left open to an incompetent populist governing party that is becoming more and more loathed by voters. Seemingly, all they have left to clutch are the meagre straws of their deranged Rwanda policy and the tattered flag of a failed Brexit project. So, will delaying Rishi Sunak's inevitable day of judgement only make a terrible situation even worse?
Tim's latest book The Conservative Party after Brexit (published by Polity) charts the Party's dizzying descent into populist and radical hard right Brexit populism.Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from John McTernan, one-time political secretary to Tony Blair and seasoned political strategist and commentator.
How does Labour not only win but replace the Tories finally as the natural party of government?
14 years of Tory misrule have brought the failed projects of Brexit and austerity and the Boris Johnson and Liz Truss shitshows. Now Rishi Sunak and his divided rabble fester low down in the polls, waging their culture wars, while the country falls apart around them.
John argues that people are crying out for real change and Labour has an opportunity to win big and stay in power. Will Keir Starmer grasp the opportunity and give people the change they want and that the UK desperately needs?Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from US journalist and author Matt Johnson on the threat posed - yet again - by Donald Trump and his deranged far right MAGA cult that has captured the Republican Party.
Matt - @mattjj89 - the author of How Hitchens can save the Left, explains how there is little evidence so far of a tangible centre-left coalition to confront Trump - who is a dead cert to be the Republicans' nomination to run for the presidency in 2024, despite facing 91 felony charges..
Incredibly, despite trying to overturn the result of the 2020 general election and provoking the January 6th insurrection, Trump is running against the incumbent Joe Biden who is 80 now and will be 86 were he to survive a second stint in the White House.
Trump himself is 78 but exudes a certain demonic energy in comparison with Biden whose age and unpopular running mate, Vice-President Harris Kamala Harris, could prove to be telling factors counting against a successful re-run.
Nick asks Matt what can be done to save the US and the world from the undoubted calamity of a second Trump presidency?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 -
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Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown on the UK's greatest taboo - the ever-deepening Brexit crisis - from Chris Grey, emeritus Professor @RoyalHolloway, and author of the highly-regarded and must-read blog, Brexit and beyond.
Extra Brexit food checks come in from next week - threatening food price rises and shortages. Meanwhile, the Tories fail to get one of its promised "Canada-style free trade agreements" with Canada!
Every week, @chrisgreybrexit - also author of the book Brexit Unfolded - exposes the many absurdities, lies and disasters of the Brexit Britain clown show and explains how the Brexiteers' preposterous promises were never remotely deliverable and were always likely to cause huge damage to the UK's economy and standing in the world. For example, we should now be seeing the Silicon Valley of the East End's Hoxton - as promised by @DanielJHannan. Er...where is it?
Both Chris and Nick lament the chronic failure of the BBC and other MSM to hold to account the charlatans like Hannan , Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage who mis-sold Brexit.
But how can Labour handle the Brexit mess they are set to inherit when so many people who voted for it refuse to accept the mayhem they were conned into inflicting on all of us?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 -
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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Chris Dillow, the economist, and author of the Stumbling and Mumbling blog.
Chris - @CJFDillow - is a keen commentator on British managerialism - the curse of incompetence and privileged entitlement that led to the Post Office scandal and blights much of modern Britain today.
Chris explains how modern Britain seems to reject competent management - opting instead for psychopaths and incompetents - often a combination of the two - who practise "managerialism" rather than efficient management that prioritises the good over bad.
All too often, today's hirers prize over-confidence - preferably relayed with private school tones - over quietly stated and competent management.
The result is a UK - beset by management scandals - where nothing seems to work.Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Daniella Peled, Managing Editor of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting, on the terrible conflict in Gaza .
At a time when South Africa is bringing its genocide case against israel before the International Court of Justice, Daniella discusses with Nick the allegations of Israel's war crimes as well as the crimes committed by Hamas on October 7th.
Daniella talks about the extreme political voices in Israel today and the impact these are having on the current conflict in Gaza and on the region. Truth is often said to be the first casualty of war. So, what roles are misinformation and lies playing in the current conflict?Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Professor Rob Ford of Manchester University on the epic civil war looming in a 2024 general election on the radical right of British politics between the Tories and Nigel Farage's latest vehicle for fantasy politics - Reform.
Brexit, Liz Truss, crippling interest rate rises, a flat-lining economy with booming immigration, and the cost of living crisis are just a few of the disasters visited on the UK by the radical right since the 2016 EU referendum.
Rob explains the differences between the far right right and the radical right. Rob, a leading academic and author of Revolt on the Right, explains how the Tories are caught on the horns of a dilemma.
Do the Tories continue apeing Faragist politics and continue to alienate traditional middle class Tory voters in the key battlegrounds of the Home Counties? Or do they try to tack to the centre and upset the ageing crackpots in their constituency parties and their Red Wall working class one-time Brexit supporters? Are they in danger of alienating both groups and everyone else in between?Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets the end of the year Lowdown from author, historian and novelist James Hawes as both contemplate the prospects of a general election in 2024.
The last 13-14 years of Tory misrule has brought the successive disasters of austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson, the Great Covid Bungle, Lettuce Truss , the so called Cost of Living Crisis, a crisis hugely exacerbated by Brexit. The list goes on and on - but Nick and James hope that won't apply to the Tories.
Nick is more hopeful of the electoral wipe-out the Tories richly deserve but James is more cautious, believing that somehow the tribal English Tory vote will rally to the clarion lies of The Daily Mail - despite the obvious weirdness of Rishi Sunak and the cataclysmic mis-governance .of the last 13 and a half years
Both agree the defeat of the Tories - now little more than an English nationalist party - isimperative if the UK is to rescued from its dizzying descent to poverty and irrelevance or even saved in its current form.Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from barrister and writer Colin Yeo on the Tories' never ending Rwanda farce and the dog's breakfast they have made of the UK's asylum & immigration regime.
When the UK flounced out of the European Union, it also walked away from a returns policy that meant asylum seekers could be returned to the first safe EU country they arrived in.
Now the Tories are stuck with the preposterous and performatively cruel policy of exporting refugees to Rwanda which they desperately hope will deter future asylum seekers. However, they have been thwarted by the courts so far. Now, they squabble among themselves about how to get their madcap scheme off the ground and dream of getting just one refugee on the plane to Kigali!Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown from Professor Rob Ford of Manchester University, professor of political science, co-author of the award-winning book Revolt on the Right, and political commentator and pundit extraordinaire about the perfect storm of woe descending on the Tories.
The disasters of Brexit, cost of living, the bungling of Covid, Partygate, the catastrophic and chaotic reigns of Boris Johnson and Liz "The Lettuce" Truss have been followed by the Rishi Sunak sh1tsh0w.
Exhausted and divided , and appealing only to headbangers in their own party, the Tories stagger on from one disaster to the next, desperately trying to limit the scale of the tsunami of voter retribution heading their way. How big will the defeat be or will they manage somehow to salvage enough of a base to threaten a come-back in the not-too-distance future?Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Matt Johnson, author of How Hitchens can save the Left [Pitchstone Books] a celebrated study of the writer and polemicist Christopher Hitchens who sadly died 12 years ago aged just 62.
Hitchens lived in the US and was a controversial and vivid commentator on the US and its various foreign policy adventures following the 9/11 terror atrocities in the US. He started adult life as a Marxist but later espoused causes that were labelled "neo-con" at the time.
But what would "Hitch" have made of a topsy-turvy politics which has seen dangerous buffoons like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson come to power and the rise of an authoritarian right that Matt Johnson identifies as the posing the greatest current threat to Mankind? Nick and Matt discuss this endlessly fascinating and brilliant writer and wonder what on earth he would have made of it all.Support the Show.
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Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Professor Shlomo Sand, author and historian about his new book A Brief Global History of the Left (Polity).
What is happening to the Left? It seems to be dying a slow death in the West and certainly in Israel.. While many commentators have predicted its demise, the Left has always defied these bleak prognoses and risen from the ashes in the most unexpected ways.
Nevertheless, we are witnessing today a global decline in organised movements on the Left, and while social struggles continue to challenge dominant political regimes, these efforts do not translate into support for traditional left parties or into the creation of dynamic movements on the Left.
Bestselling historian Shlomo Sand tells Nick that the global decline of the Left is linked to the waning of the idea of equality that has united citizens in the past and inspired them to engage in collective action. Professor Sand and Nick also discuss the current crisis in Israel and Gaza.Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown from Dr Robert Saunders, the historian and author, who is based at Queen Mary University of London where he specialises in modern British history, from the early 19th century to the present.
Nick and Robert discuss the poisoned legacy of Boris Johnson and why so many people voted for him in December 2019 and continue to support, despite the obvious failure of Brexit and his cataclysmic bungling of the pandemic as is being revealed in the Covid Inquiry.
Robert is one of the best observers of the modern political scene and is currently researching a new history of democracy in Britain. His recent book Yes to Europe! examined the Britain of the 70's and the 1975 referendum to join what was then called the European Economic Community (EEC) - a fore-runner of the European Union.Support the show
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Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown on the brutal conflict between Israel and Hamas in Gaza from Daniella Peled, Managing Editor of the of Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR).
Daniella puts into context the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas. Approximately 1,400 Israelis were killed by Hamas on October 7th. Since then, the Israeli assault on Gaza has killed at least 4,000 civilians, and is leading to a humanitarian crisis.
Daniella compares this latest violence with other conflicts that she has studied around the world.
She and Nick try to make sense of the latest conflict between Israel and Palestinians, the prospect of peace between the 2 sides and examine the turbulent political situation in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories leading up to the lethal Hamas attack on Israel from October 7th.Support the show
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