NEW The letter the BBC could send back to Trump A proposal for a reply to his $1bn claim By me. Enjoy. emptycity.substack.com/p/the-letter...

When rigmarole becomes reality

In 1996 I did a little in internship at BBC Westminster. At the time, Robbie Gibb was one of the producers there. Even in that period, he was self evidently a pro-Tory apparatchik, who made no attempt to hide his agenda from his colleagues or even from the little work experience kid.

The weakness of the European Commission’s proposal to tackle foreign interference in elections shows an ominous deference to US interests, critics have said.

"The anti-journalism culture at the BBC" Piece from me on how BBC management’s lack of concern for basic journalistic standards is threatening the BBC’s future open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

The British political system gives every appearance of facing a crisis without precedent, and no one knows where it will end. @nickcohen.bsky.social

It’s just depressing. But as much as I had hoped for them to succeed, Starmer seems stuck in the analogue world and simply not up for the job in the digital age. Apart from not having a clear vision of what he wants on a broader level. He prob will and should go.

"The anti-journalism culture at the BBC" Piece from me on how BBC management’s lack of concern for basic journalistic standards is threatening the BBC’s future open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

Britain goes berserk – long read from me and podcast with historian @robertsaunders.bsky.social on how Farage could become PM on a tiny share of the vote open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

Britain goes berserk – long read from me and podcast with historian @robertsaunders.bsky.social on how Farage could become PM on a tiny share of the vote open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

"If the BBC is so woke, how come it grovels before Farage?" Piece from me on how, leftish bias at the BBC should never be excused. But nor can we avoid the grim truth that the radical right is now a clear threat to independent journalism in the UK open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

Good piece by @nickcohen.bsky.social on what some would call the crisis engulfing the BBC. (Whether that’s a reasonable description remains to be seen.) open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

"If the BBC is so woke, how come it grovels before Farage?" Piece from me on how, leftish bias at the BBC should never be excused. But nor can we avoid the grim truth that the radical right is now a clear threat to independent journalism in the UK open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

Violence baguettes violence.

For anyone still tempted to take Dominic Cummings at all seriously, he's now an advocate of Donald Trump-style open racism.

If parties want credit for telling hard truths, they need to tell them when they're genuinely hard. If Labour had told the truth about taxes & the costs of Brexit before the election, its majority would be smaller. But it would have more real power & the public would put more faith in its judgment

“You may think you live an unexceptional, law-abiding life…(but) maybe you engaged in heretical thought crimes on social media which will allow left or right to destroy your life.” Important piece by @nickcohen.bsky.social

There are Facebook groups of your average centre-rightish Ukrainian diaspora aunts in Cleveland or Chicago that bounce back and forth between cute cat memes and demands that anyone associated with the Trump regime must be ruthlessly crushed

Leaving the ECHR won’t “Take Back Control” – it will hand your rights to politicians eastangliabylines.co.uk/politics/jus...

Lots of commentary saying that it's not clear what the point of the speech is. Seems pretty clear to me. It's pitchrolling broad based tax rises in the Budget and making sure - as Reeves did with the fiscal rule change in 2024 - that it doesn't surprise the markets on the day.

Why the trans campaign is losing” Podcast with Prof Ronan McCrea, author of the blistering The End of the Gay Rights Revolution: How Hubris and Overreach Threaten Gay Freedom And then a long read from me on the dangers of feeding the radical right

Why the trans campaign is losing” Podcast with Prof Ronan McCrea, author of the blistering The End of the Gay Rights Revolution: How Hubris and Overreach Threaten Gay Freedom And then a long read from me on the dangers of feeding the radical right

LGBTQ+ activists have played into the hands of their enemies. From Trump’s America to Putin’s Russia gay liberation is in danger. Podcast with Ronan McCrea and long read from me open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

The Local Housing Allowance freeze increases the cost burden on councils through the provision of temporary accommodation. Councils in England's net temporary accommodation costs reached £2.8 billion last year, a more than three-fold in the last decade. The latest Housing Outlook ➡️ buff.ly/9r5qPBc

She is being arrested because the video was leaked, rather than because events on the video happened....?

LGBTQ+ activists have played into the hands of their enemies. From Trump’s America to Putin’s Russia gay liberation is in danger. Podcast with Ronan McCrea and long read from me open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

Big tech is showing Trump and corrupt rulers every where that it can help destroy autocracy’s opponents Piece from me on the merger of tech and power open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

The last 24 hours have shown us what Britain is truly up against: a small phalanx of hatemongers who despise Britain so much they want to drag it down into the same filth they live in.

Big tech is showing Trump and corrupt rulers every where that it can help destroy autocracy’s opponents Piece from me on the merger of tech and power open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

Lil bump

If there were a change of leadership before the next election, it will be important to know if the next leader agrees with the current leader on the rejection of Idi Amin as an inspiration: Current principle is now: no retrospective rule changes to deport or disadvantage legal & settled migrants

The Times has deleted two articles - both hit pieces - this week. Has this ever happened before?

Ukraine’s military intelligence has caught up with another Russian war criminal who committed atrocities in the Kyiv region in 2022. Lieutenant Colonel Veniamin Mazherin, 45, was blown up in his car in the Kemerovo region which is deep in the heart of Russia. No Russian is safe.

The Conservatives plans to deport hundreds of thousands of legal residents of the UK are far more extreme than anything Donald Trump is proposing Piece from me on the horror show of the right morphing into the far right open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

With its Islamified left, radical right and failing centre, France represents Europe’s future I recorded a grim podcast with the French journalist and historian Agnès Poirier on how it could be a future where the radical right dominates. open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

Ah yes, the years 1997-2010, definitely a period the former chairman of Northern Rock should be casting a stone at the public sector over

Literally one of the greatest soft power brands on planet earth driven into the ground by successive British governments that embrace failure, decline and irrelevance. on.ft.com/3Wq1XIT

Starting to think that not constitutional design, nor affective polarisation, nor declining institutional trust, but bothsidesism will be what finally does for democracy.

Edward Luce on silence and complicity in Trump’s Washington Podcast and piece on how US democracy is cracking under the MAGA assault open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

With its Islamified left, radical right and failing centre, France represents Europe’s future I recorded a grim podcast with the French journalist and historian Agnès Poirier on how it could be a future where the radical right dominates. open.substack.com/pub/nickcohe...

I am old enough to remember people in the West and especially college students, actually giving a damn about Darfur. Now, nobody gives a shit. I have no idea why, it's not like there is a legal limit on the number of conflicts and massacres one can care about, Gaza or Ukraine are not an excuse.

Airline strands ex-BBC editor, citing Parkinson's www.bbc.com/news/article... Don’t travel with Turkish Airlines- they discriminate against people with Parkinson’s

Average pay for partners at EY accounting firm was £787,000 last year. Partners have responded by launching a lobbying campaign to stop the Treasury changing the rules to ensure that, like everyone else, they pay NICs on their earnings.

The world is now a competition between non-oppressed groups cosplaying at being oppressed.

Painful to watch, but revealing, too, of the tactical problem for the Tories of pitching Reform-like messages whilst also trying to differentiate themselves from Reform. And good to see dogged questioning from Lewis Goodall.

"There is no great outcry in the right-wing press or from conservative politicians against mass deportation. The days when they stood up to the injustice of retrospective legislation are long gone." A good read, this.

‘Readers need to realise that the supposedly refined and respectable British Conservatives are now more extreme than Trump’.

When Nick Griffin, former leader of the BNP, appeared on BBC Question Time on October 22nd 2009, it was considered a national scandal. Now Reform and Conservatives appear on the programme regularly and advocate similar far-right policies and there are no protests at all.

The commitment of centre-right politicians for decades after the WWII to act as a firewall between them and the far right has collapsed.

"There is no great outcry in the right-wing press or from conservative politicians against mass deportation. The days when they stood up to the injustice of retrospective legislation are long gone." Another good and valuable read on how fast things seem to shift in Britain atm. Deeply worrying.