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Get The Lowdown from Nick Cohen as he investigates a world that seems to get ever more crazy, with leading commentators and politicians. Each week, leading commentator Nick Cohen talks to the country's leading movers and shakers - to cut the through much of the drivel and commentary that passes for so much political discourse these days. Nick - a long-term columnist for The Observer and The Spectator - will be attempting to make sense of our ever stranger and troubling world with insightful ...
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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 expl…
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Ep 32: Will the real Keir Starmer step forward? With the Labour Leader's biographer Tom Baldwin
44:50
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…
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Ep 31: Pulling Brexit Britain out of its economic death spiral - with economist Danny Blanchflower
38:08
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 Tor…
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Ep 30: The Tories' by-election blues and the stench of electoral death with Professor Tim Bale
29:19
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 Kingsw…
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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 …
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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 con…
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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 o…
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Ep 26: The Post Office scandal & the curse of British managerialism with economist Chris Dillow
32:32
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 …
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Ep 25: Crimes against humanity, lies & misinformation in the Gaza conflict with Daniella Peled
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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 crime…
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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 immigr…
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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 cri…
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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 th…
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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,…
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Ep 20: A Hitch in time? What would Christopher Hitchens have made of today's insanity? With author Matt Johnson
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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…
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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 ri…
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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 …
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Ep 16: War and peace in the Middle East with journalist Daniella Peled of Institute for War & Peace Reporting
30:13
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 G…
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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 …
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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 chang…
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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 b…
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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 …
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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 …
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Ep 11: The Stagnation nation - is the UK's decline unstoppable? with Profesor Jonathan Portes
28:44
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. …
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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 …
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Ep. 9: Wither and whither the Tories? With author & Conservative Party expert - Professor Tim Bale
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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…
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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 sym…
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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 histo…
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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 Johnso…
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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 …
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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 histo…
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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 sh…
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Get The Lowdown from Nick Cohen with veteran reporter and author John Sweeney on Putin and Russia's illegal war against Ukraine. John, the author of a recent book on Putin called "Killer in the Kremlin", discusses with Nick the possibilities for a Ukrainian victory as well as what defeat would mean for Putin's regime. Will Putin fall if Ukraine win…
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Writers and columnists Nick Cohen and Rafael Behr discuss the events that have shaped our world and dominated their personal and professional lives. Rafel discusses his new book - Politics - A Survivor's Guide. Rafel discusses how the impact of #Brexit and the wave of nationalist fervour in its wake has shaped his attitude to politics and the UK. S…
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