The Lowdown from Nick Cohen

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 Tory party with Nick Tyrone - the author, policy advisor and Tory Party observer and commentator 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.

If the Beatles were "The Fab Four" - then how would you describe the 4 remaining contenders for the hollow crown of the Conservative Party - Kim Badenoch, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick? "The Unfab Four?"

The Tories were obliterated in the 2024 General Election - reduced to a rump of just 121 MPs compared to Labour's 404 and the Liberal Democrats' 72. And yet - according to @NicholasTyrone - the Tories have learned absolutely nothing from their rout - believing that the party's mistake was "not being right wing enough", and that eventually, the Great British Public will see the error of their ways and look kindly on all the Tories' failed policies from Brexit to its failed economic and immigration policies.

Former Tory MP Theresa May recently warned her party that it has become so obsessed with chasing votes from Nigel Farage's Reform votes that it had ignored the flight of support to the Liberal Democrats and Labour.

Nick Tyrone believes the 2 leading contenders - Kim Badenoch and particularly Robert Jenrick- are also in thrall to a doomed electoral strategy that they would probably prove to be electoral duds. He tells Nick the Tories are still chasing the "mythical 52 per cent" of the electorate who voted for Brexit in 2016 - refusing to accept that public opinion has now moved decisively against Brexit and that many who did vote for it have either died or woken up to the damage it is doing to the UK

As ever, the Tories seem obsessed with getting voters back from Reform while ignoring liberal minded Tories who've rejected the party's match to radical right extremism and voted for Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Greens at the election. But Nick believes the greater threat facing the Tories is internal - a probably unavoidable schism between the sensible so-called One nation Tories - so far bullied into silence - and the hard right wing who dream of rapprochement with Farage and co.

Read Nick Cohen's Substack column Writing from London, Politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

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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 clothes and glasses have threatened to knock the new government off its stride. Or so the right would have us believe. The fury over the new government's planned to axe the Winter Fuel Allowance for thousands of pensioners have also sent the party into a nosedive in the polls. But how much of the current rumpus is genuine upset over Labour bungling and insensitivity and how much is rightwing tabloid-confected fury?

Nick and Steve also discuss the emerging political landscape, focusing on Keir Starmer's leadership and the potential for a more radical approach to government. Could Labour caution over issues like Europe and concern over losing voters to the Faragist and Tory populist right repel the very people who put Labour into power? Could these voters be driven into the arms of the Greens and Liberal Democrats? Labour won the election on a low turn out. How can the party now win the right to govern and lead the UK according to its own values and goals?

How can Labour achieve the growth it needs to put the country back on the road to recovery if it approaches with such apparent timidity issues such as rejoining the Customs Union and the Single Market? How can it balance the books without upsetting constituencies like pensioners who have so far reaped the benefits of Tory rule at the perceived cost of the young?

Steve is an accomplished political commentator, author and podcaster. His latest book Turning Points: Crisis and Change in Modern Britain, from 1945 to Truss is published by Macmillan and his regular podcast Rock and Roll Politics is a must listen.

Read Nick Cohen's regular and compelling Substack column Writing from London

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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 inner workings of Russia's misinformation and disinformation armoury. His third book is How to win an information war: The propagandist who outwitted Hitler. Peter talks about the growing sophistication of Putin's disinformation machine which he is using in his war against Ukraine and in his attempts to influence elections, including the United States where his favoured candidate and convicted felon Donald Trump is hoping for re-election. Peter says the Kremlin's best foreign agents are the so-called "useful idiots" in influential positions who are not even aware that they are being manipulated into helping Putin and his various plots.

Donald Trump may worship at the altar of his hero Vladimir Putin. But both men have a strikingly similar tone of discourse - epic mendacity and disinformation snarled sneeringly and sarcastically at anyone seeking to hold them to account.

Read Nick's latest Substack column Writing from London - Sarcastic, sneering and sadistic: The voice of modern power, What Putin and Trump's propagandists have in common.

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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 battered by years of Tory misrule?

Rafael concludes Labour may have the policies and the right people to carry them out but wonders whether Sir Keir and his chancellor Rachel Reeves have the political vim to sell their vision and plans to the electorate. Already, the BBC has declared Labour's blink-and-you'd've-missed-it political honeymoon to be "over."

Rafael @rafaelbehr concedes Labour has its work cut out - as latest opinion polls suggest - and a rocky passage lies ahead. But the Conservatives have not even begun to examine the reasons for their crushing defeat in July.

Most media attention has been focussed on the split on the Tories' far right, and with Nigel Farage\s latest vehicle, Reform, while steadfastly ignoring the hemorrhaging of one-time rock solid Conservative seats to the Liberal Democrats, including the Witney and Maidenhead constituencies of former prime ministers  Lord Cameron and Theresa May. Rafael contends that the famous "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells" - which the Tories also lost to the Lib Dems - remain particularly disgusted by brexit and its abject and predictable failure.

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.

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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 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 the Nazis?

Annette, @annettedittert also a filmmaker, columnist and author, talks about the huge widespread disillusionment Germans share about the current coalition government led by the Social Democrat chancellor Olaf Scholz. There is also  growing popular dismay over the state of Germany itself where nothing, as with spades in the UK, seems to work any more.

What can be done to counter the threat of the AfD which is profoundly anti-EU, and anti-immigrant and is seen to be a cheerleader for Vladimir Putin and opponent of aid to Ukraine?

Anglophile Annette also talks about her depression over the state of the UK under the 3 year Boris Johnson shit show and how Brexit has helped destroy the UK's reputation and and power in Germany and elsewhere, to the point where few Germans now appear interested in what happens there.

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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 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.

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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 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.

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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.

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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? 

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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 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.

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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