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...

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 book  Brexit Unfolded  -...

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...

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 having on the...

Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from Professor Rob Ford of Manchester University on the epic civil war looming in a 2024 general election on the radical right of British politics between the Tories and Nigel Farage's latest vehicle for fantasy politics - Reform. Brexit, Liz Truss, crippling interest rate rises, a flat-lining economy  with booming immigration, and the cost of living crisis are just a few of the disasters visited on the UK by the radical right since the 2016 EU referendum. Rob...

Nick Cohen gets the end of the year Lowdown from author, historian and novelist James Hawes as both contemplate the prospects of a general election in 2024. The last 13-14 years of Tory misrule has brought the successive disasters of austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson, the Great Covid Bungle,  Lettuce Truss , the  so called Cost of Living Crisis, a crisis hugely exacerbated by Brexit. The list goes on and on - but Nick and James hope that won't apply to the Tories. Nick is more hopeful of the...

Nick Cohen gets The Lowdown from barrister and writer Colin Yeo on the Tories' never ending Rwanda farce and the dog's breakfast they have made of the UK's asylum & immigration regime. When the UK flounced out of the European Union, it also walked away from a returns policy that meant asylum seekers could be returned to the first safe EU country they arrived in. Now the Tories are stuck with the preposterous and performatively cruel policy of exporting refugees to Rwanda which they...

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 sh1tsh0w. Exhausted and...

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" at the...

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 Left, and...

Nick Cohen gets the Lowdown from Dr Robert Saunders, the historian and author, who  is based at  Queen Mary University of London where he specialises  in modern British history, from the early 19th century to the present.   Nick and Robert discuss the poisoned legacy of Boris Johnson and why so many people voted for him in December 2019 and continue to support, despite the obvious failure of Brexit and his cataclysmic bungling of the pandemic as is being revealed in the Covid...

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...

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 found...

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 reports...

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 fixate on identity to the exclusion of...

Nick Cohen talks to Dr Mike Martin, ex-soldier, military strategist and author about what victory looks like for Ukraine and how it can be achieved. Mike,  a senior visiting research fellow in the Department of War Studies at King's College , London,  explain to Nick how the West initially miscalculated Ukraine's chances against a belligerent Russia by looking at the spreadsheet showing the relative military strengths of each country in terms of material and troop numbers.  Western leaders...

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 periods of...

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 UK's growth rate shrank by...

This week,  GetThe Lowdown from Nick Cohen with Peter Foster, Public Policy Editor of the Financial Times and expert on all things Brexit. @PMDFoster This month, Cannongate publishes Peter's much-anticipated new book What went wrong with Brexit, and what we can do about it. Probably, not every much for the moment seems to be the answer posed by the book title. Brexit has crashed and burned - taking the country with it. But no one wants to talk about it - despite the rolling catastrophe of...

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 controlling local Tory...

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 like drones and missiles. Jade...

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 distorts how many...

In 2018 , Conservative MP and Europhile Dr Phillip Lee resigned as a minister from Theresa May's stricken government over what he saw as the troubling direction of Brexit. The following year, he dramatically crossed the floor of the House of Commons to join the Liberal Democrats - during a speech by the disgraced former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson. Now back working as a GP in Berkshire, Phillip Lee gives a fascinating insight into the Tories' descent into nationalism, Euro-phobia and hard...

Nick Cohen talks to Polly Toynbee, celebrated columnist, broadcaster and author about Britain's stubborn class system and the growing gap between the rich and poor under successive Tory governments. Atlantic Books has just published Polly's latest book,  An Uneasy Inheritance, My family and other radicals, which has received rave reviews, not least from Nick himself in a  recent Substack column. Polly explains how - over the years - she has taken a series of blue collar jobs to better...

Nick Cohen speaks to historian and author James Hawes about the crisis of Englishness and the consequences this crisis is having on the rest of the United Kingdom. James, the author of  internationally acclaimed The Shortest History of England , reveals how this crisis has deep historical and geographical roots that have dictated the turbulent history of our islands and could bring an end to the United Kingdom itself. This crisis is being brought to a head by the English nationalists, who now...