Episode description

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

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

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

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

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

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

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