Episode description

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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