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 Send us a text 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 d...
Apr 26, 2024•26 min•Ep 33•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text 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 ...
Feb 25, 2024•38 min•Ep 31•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text 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 % swi...
Feb 18, 2024•29 min•Ep 30•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text 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 fall...
Feb 11, 2024•55 min•Ep 29•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text 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 ch...
Feb 04, 2024•40 min•Ep 28•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text 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 boo...
Jan 28, 2024•42 min•Ep 27•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text 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 "...
Jan 21, 2024•33 min•Ep 26•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text 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 ha...
Jan 14, 2024•30 min•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text 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 sh1t...
Dec 09, 2023•47 min•Ep 21•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text 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&qu...
Dec 02, 2023•36 min•Ep 20•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text 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 Le...
Nov 19, 2023•32 min•Ep 19•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text 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...
Oct 21, 2023•30 min•Ep 16•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown from celebrated lawyer and author David Hooper whose latest book, Buying Silence, How oligarchs, corporations and plutocrats use the law to gag their critics (Biteback) exposes how the rich and powerful use vexatious so-called SLAPP legal actions - Strategic Lawsuits against Public Participation - to silence and destroy whiste-blowers, journalists and campaigners. Dodgy chancers from notorious warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin to the corrupt Robert Maxwell have...
Oct 21, 2023•32 min•Ep 17•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text This week, Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown from Dr Dave Rich, Head of Policy for the Community Security Trust (CST) - an organisation that provides security for Jewish communities and institutions. Dave is also an expert in left wing anti-semitism and the author of the book Everyday Hate: How antisemitism is built into our world – and how you can change it (Biteback.) Jews in the UK often suffer instances of antisemitism when there is conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Dave r...
Oct 12, 2023•36 min•Ep 15•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text Nick Cohen talks to Yascha Mounk, the political scientist and author, about his new book about the astonishing rise of "Woke ideology" - The Identity Trap: A story of ideas and power in our time. According to the Washington Post, "whatever you call it — identity politics, political correctness, wokeness or cancel culture — some new power seems to be at work in our culture and institutions." Yascha tells Nick that advocates of this "Woke" ideology fixa...
Oct 05, 2023•47 min•Ep 14•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text Nick Cohen talks to James Hawes, Renaissance man, historian, writer and novelist about the Tories' southern English tribe and the threat it poses to the rest of the UK. James, the author of The Shortest History of England, predicts the Tories will become ever more extreme and nationalist in electoral defeat and that the eventual break up of the UK looks unavoidable. The UK's curse - its first-past-the -post electoral system has guaranteed virtual Tory hegemony for long p...
Sep 23, 2023•44 min•Ep 12•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text This week, Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Jonathan Portes , Professor of Economics and Public Policy at King's College London, ex- Chief Economist at the Cabinet Office. Jonathan is also a Senior Fellow of the Economic and Social Research Council's UK in a Changing Europe initiative, which examines the UK's now troubled relatIonship with the EU. Can anything be done to prevent the UK's growing economic crisis? Is decline inevitable? Jonathan reveals how the U...
Sep 13, 2023•29 min•Ep 11•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text Professor Tim Bale of the Queen Mary University of London is widely looked on as the UK's keenest academic observer of the Conservative Party. 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. Have the Tories truly transmogrified into to the far right europhobic party they appear to be or are they merely aping one to appeal to the ageing reactionaries...
Jul 24, 2023•47 min•Ep 9•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text Russia expert and author Dr Jade McGlynn joins Nick Cohen from Kyiv to talk about Ukraine's tragedy - a Russia that has been badly run by bad men - with a couple of rare exceptions here and there. And how this also happens to be Russia's tragedy. Jade explains how the recent "Mad March on Moscow" by Wagner militia mafioso Yevgeny Prigozhin is a symptom of Vladamir Putin's dysfunction and despotism, and how hatred flows now flows between Ukraine and Russia ...
Jul 02, 2023•42 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text The Lowdown from Nick Cohen this week examines the issue of race and diversity in the UK with the freelance writer and author Tom Owolade. Tom's brilliant and ground-breaking book This is not America - published by Atlantic - argues that too much of the debate about race in Britain has been viewed through the prism of American experiences and history. This prism fails to reflect the challenges – and achievements – of an increasingly diverse black British population and distor...
Jun 26, 2023•39 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast Send us a text Nick Cohen speaks in depth about Britain's growing Brexit food crisis with Liz Webster from the campaigns, Save British Farming and Save British Food. #Brexit has already smashed food supply lines and jeopardised Britain's food security. Now new Brexit checks on EU imports scheduled for October look certain to lead to even more empty supermarket shelves and further fuel food inflation. Liz Webster explains how Brexit threatens to worsen even further Britain's alread...
May 28, 2023•51 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast 
