Nick talks to Naomi Smith of the campaign group Best for Britain on the dead hand of Brexit On the fifth anniversary of Brexit, Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 talks with Naomi Smith, @pimllicat chief executive officer o f 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 c...
Feb 03, 2025•33 min•Transcript available on Metacast Nick Cohen talks Trump with U.S. expert & historian Andrew Gawthorpe Nick 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 th...
Jan 24, 2025•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast Trump Terror will turn U.S. into world's biggest banana republic Nick 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 abo...
Jan 20, 2025•37 min•Ep 61•Transcript available on Metacast How does Starmer handle the threat posed by Trump & Musk? This week Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 talks with Steve Richards @steverichards14 , political commentator, author, broadcaster & historian about the threat posed to the Labour government by in-coming U.S. president Donald Trump & the menagerie of far-right weirdos like Elon Musk who has been launching a barrage of inflammatory tweets at the government since last Summer. Trump "much more dangerous" than U.S.-UK relationship breakdown...
Jan 13, 2025•38 min•Ep 60•Transcript available on Metacast 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 angloc...
Jan 06, 2025•38 min•Ep 59•Transcript available on Metacast Reading the runes for 2025 Nick 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 it Re...
Dec 30, 2024•41 min•Ep 58•Transcript available on Metacast 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 2024 Guests Tim and Nick hand out specia...
Dec 23, 2024•40 min•Ep 57•Transcript available on Metacast 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 surge Something 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 Fara...
Dec 16, 2024•36 min•Ep 56•Transcript available on Metacast 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 authoritarianism Social media is destroying the truth and the currently chaotic informa...
Dec 09, 2024•44 min•Ep 55•Transcript available on Metacast 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-Trump Rafael says - of the danger posed to Kemi Badenoch's Tories - that if they go ahead and throw in their lo...
Dec 02, 2024•48 min•Ep 54•Transcript available on Metacast 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 lea...
Nov 25, 2024•37 min•Ep 53•Transcript available on Metacast 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 de...
Nov 22, 2024•37 min•Ep 52•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Nov 18, 2024•35 min•Ep 51•Transcript available on Metacast 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 MENACE Tom @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 t...
Nov 11, 2024•40 min•Ep 50•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Nov 07, 2024•29 min•Ep 49•Transcript available on Metacast 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 faile...
Nov 04, 2024•40 min•Ep 48•Transcript available on Metacast 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 or...
Oct 28, 2024•39 min•Ep 47•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Oct 21, 2024•33 min•Ep 46•Transcript available on Metacast Nick chats to the Swedish Axel Gordh Humlesj, 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 Kom...
Oct 14, 2024•31 min•Ep 45•Transcript available on Metacast 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 ...
Oct 11, 2024•35 min•Ep 44•Transcript available on Metacast 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 t...
Oct 07, 2024•37 min•Ep 43•Transcript available on Metacast 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...
Oct 04, 2024•29 min•Ep 42•Transcript available on Metacast The French post-revolutionary politician Talleyrand said of the Bourbon royals that they had learned nothing and forgotten nothing. In contrast, the Tories appear to have learned nothing, and forgotten everything - particularly about winning elections - including the longstanding UK political rule that the further the drift from centre ground politics to batshit extremes, the more certain the thrashing at the ballot box. Nick Cohen - @NickCohen4 - chats about the increasingly dire state of the T...
Sep 29, 2024•35 min•Ep 41•Transcript available on Metacast Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 and the author and political commentator Steve Richards @steverichards14 discuss the challenges faced by the Labour government as it faces down a ferocious backlash from the radicalised right and far right, and their client media. How can Sir Keir Starmer tackle the series of omni-crises - whether relating to the economy or public services - left by 14 years of disastrous and frequently deranged Tory government? Far right riots and trumped up stories about Starmer's gifted...
Sep 26, 2024•44 min•Ep 40•Transcript available on Metacast 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 in...
Sep 24, 2024•34 min•Ep 39•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text Nick 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 ...
Sep 14, 2024•49 min•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text Nick Cohen chats withAnnette Dittert, London Correspondent and bureau chief for ARD, Germany's first and celebrated post-war public broadcaster - also known as "Das Erste" (The First) . The Far Right AfD (Alternative for German) made stunning gains in recent state elections in eastern German in Thuringia and Saxony , throwing mainstream parties into a funk and causing shockwaves across Europe. What does this mean for Germany 80 less than 80 years after the defeat of...
Sep 07, 2024•37 min•Ep 37•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text Nick talks with Anne Applebaum, the celebrated American journalist, author and historian about her new book Autocracy Inc., The dictators who want to rule the world , published by Penguin. Putin, Xi Jinping, Jong Un, Trump, Maduro - dictators great and small - wannabe or real deal - dominate the news space these days. Democracy hasn't been under so much pressure since the 30's and 40's. Anne talks about the forces driving this new age of autocracy and the men with t...
Aug 03, 2024•41 min•Ep 36•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text 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...
Jun 23, 2024•39 min•Ep 35•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text @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 "Trussonomi...
Jun 16, 2024•49 min•Ep 34•Transcript available on Metacast 
