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.

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 Farage - not on the failed shitshow of Brexit nor on his negative message on immigration. "What an extraordinary state of affairs!" says Peter. adding, "It's shattering. I mean, Farage is, is a bigot. His finances and the way he runs his sort of, his party, astonishing, full of dreadful people who shouldn't be seen in public, and yet somehow, it's very like Trump, that is, and they cannot find a way of tackling him or seem not even to want to."

Peter had high hopes before the election of Sir Keir Starmer, believing his working class background and record of solid achievement before entering politics helped made him an attractive political force But he now says of the PM, "he comes over as a nothing somebody's blown around by the wind". Peter believes the Labour government's current timidity is driven by an addiction to focus groups - something it shares with the Tories." He adds, " it's one of the sicknesses of our time."

Peter says Tory party is now "a vehicle for thoroughly unpleasant people and who don't understand what Britain is about" and that he same can be said of the press that used to identify as Conservative. He says, "They [right wing press] flourish by going after vulnerable minorities they're wrong about almost everything."

Peter is disturbed by Trump toady Elon Musk's threat to fund Reform, saying "what is happening here is indeed a takeover of Britain, culturally, socially, politically, and there's a massive attempt to do it economically by the United States. And it's only just started." The UK should tell these extremist far right forces to "get lost", Peter adding, "we're now moving into a world, an authoritarian world, which wants to destroy liberal democracy."

Peter Oborne is an associate editor for the Middle East Eye . His latest book published by Simon & Schuster is The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is wrong about Islam

Nick Cohen's @ latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

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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?

Social media is destroying the truth and the currently chaotic information system is leading to authoritarianism. Imran says, "The information ecosystem has evolved in recent years and has been entirely commercially driven and has been without the consent of people - quite often - forced upon us." Imran adds people should have the ability to force change on the social media giants.

Conspiracy theories, extremist views, disinformation. misinfomation and outright lies are increasingly dominating social media more and more. Imran says extremist political movements were "benefiting from mobilising conspiracy, theory communities, hate communities, and that wasn't just happening in the U.S. You know, the lazy assumption is this is a Trump thing. It's not." He adds, "What social media platforms have done have taken... those fringe ideologies, [&] churn them into the mainstream."

Imran is one of the few to have taken on by Elon Musk and survived to tell the tale! Back in March, Imran comprehensively defeated Musk in the courts when a U.S. judge threw out attempts by the Trump boot-licker to gag Imran's CCDH organisation. But, so far, the West hasn't been as determined to take on the Leviathans of digital. "It is because of a lack of will and a lack of confidence, I would argue, amongst European and United States, lawmakers, that we have failed to hold them accountable'", Imran tells Nick, adding, "that's in part because, you know, this is difficult for us. We are true believers in Britain and in the United States in freedom of speech."

Imran says the local deli is subject to far more regulation than online social media moguls and that has ledt us all exposed to thr abuses of social media power as we saw in the U.S. presidential cam paign when. Elon Musk flagrantly put X, formerly TWITTER to the service of Donald Trump. Imran asks "How on earth can it be that social media platforms are the only businesses in America that are not subject to negligence law or any kind of scrutiny whatsoever?"

Imran Ahmed founded the CCDH in December 2017. He frequently appears in the media as an expert in online malignant behaviour (identity-based hate; misinformation; extremism; fake news; trolling; and social media). Imran is a trustee of the charity, Victim Support. He was appointed to the Steering Committee of the UK Government's Commission on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force in April 2020, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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.

Rafael says - of the danger posed to Kemi Badenoch's Tories - that if they go ahead and throw in their lot with Trump and his crazed MAGA nationalists, "I think they [the Tories & Reform] underestimate the extent how far into mainstream, unpolitical, quite small "c" conservative Britain, a kind of visceral suspicion of America actually goes even before you've got Trump there." Farage of course already has, as Nick, put it - putting his buddy Trump's interests ahead of the UK's.

Rafael @rafaelbehr and Nick @NickCohen4 (and sometime's Raf's dog, who, BTW, inot on X!) discuss the current depressing domestic political scene with the radical right frantically trying to present the Labour government as having no mandate to govern despite a huge 170+ seat overall majority. Rafael says there is "an absence of swagger" about the Starmer government, adding, "these guys, they really are the government. And I think they need to assert that a little bit more."

Rafael @rafaelbehr believes that the failure of brexit has led to the current atmosphere of political malaise, adding "all of the emotional and political capital that you can spend - [and-sic] all the you can make of a population for sacrifice in pursuit of a broader national goal - was squandered by Brexit as a fraudulent revolution." It means, adds Rafael, that "there will not be a day when Nigel Farage is on UK Bank Notes and the 23rd of June is our national holiday and there will be monuments to Jacob Rees Mogg and, and Boris Johnson."

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.

Support the show You can also read his wonderful columns in the Guardian.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.