Nick Cohen argues that the Conservative Party's latest obsession with leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is stupid, wrong headed, is deeply damaging to the UK, destroys the basis of our human rights and and replicates the Tories' enduring stupidity in dragging the country out of the European Union, a move which has led to international isolation and is causing huge damage to the economy.

Nick argues against the UK leaving the European Convention on Human Rights and compares this proposal to Brexit and describes it as a nationalist act of folly with severe consequences. Nick says Brexit had already damaged economic growth, GDP, and public services, while isolating Britain from the EU, USA, and China. He argues that leaving the Convention would break cooperation agreements on crime and immigration, potentially jeopardise trade deals, and undermine the devolution settlements in Scotland and Wales. He emphasises that the Convention is central to the Good Friday Agreement that ended a terrible sectarian 30 year-long civil war in Northern Ireland, and notes that the US had previously warned that leaving it could affect intelligence-sharing. He also criticises the right wing for authoritarian tendencies, citing Tory leader Kemi Badenoch's stance that Conservative MPs must support leaving the Convention. Finally, Nick calls on journalists to ask harder questions about the impact he Tories' latest idiocy would have on human rights and the rule of law.

THE LOWDOWN INTERVIEWS POLLSTER PETER KELLNER ON THE RETURN OF TWO-PARTY POLiTICS

From Monday, October 19th, you can watch or listen to Nick's interview with leading pollster Peter Kellner, who says we may be witnessing the return of traditional two party Labour-Tory politics in the UK. Will support for the Greens and Reform UK continue to slide, leading to the return of the long-running Tory-Labour Punch and Judy show?

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In the latest episode of The Lowdown, Nick Cohen talks to David Frum, the former George W. Bush speechwriter turned leading “Never Trump” conservative and Atlantic writer, for a wide-ranging discussion on Trump, the deteriorating UK-U.S. relationship, America’s place in the world, and the crisis facing the democratic right.

David Frum begins by challenging easy assumptions about the withdrawal of U.S. heavy bombers from RAF Fairford. Was it another sign of Donald Trump administration’s hostility to Europe and Britain under Labour? Or did it reflect something equally alarming: that drones have changed warfare so dramatically that American bases and aircraft are now far more vulnerable than planners admit? Drawing on the lessons of Ukraine and Iran, Frum argues that the US military may be struggling to adapt to a new age of cheap, effective drone warfare.

The conversation then turns to the future of the US-UK alliance. David Frum warns that Britain can no longer assume America will return to normal once Trump leaves office. After two Trump victories, and with figures such as JD Vance waiting in the wings, European governments must prepare for the possibility that the old Atlantic alliance is gone for good. His advice to Britain is stark: stop living on nostalgia and start building serious European security arrangements.

Cohen and Frum also discuss the coming American midterms, the limits of polling, and why even a Republican defeat may not break Trumpism’s hold over the right. Frum reflects on why conservatism has moved away from markets, fiscal discipline and internationalism towards nationalism, grievance and protectionism. Economic shocks, mass migration, ageing electorates and pension politics, he argues, have all helped destabilise the old Reagan-Thatcher settlement.

The interview ranges from Trump’s war with Iran to Viktor Orbán’s Hungary, where authoritarianism works less by openly persecuting the innocent than by protecting the guilty. Frum sees echoes of that model in Trump’s America, but also signs that impunity may be starting to crack.

It is a sobering but gripping conversation with one of America’s sharpest conservative critics of Trumpism — and a warning that Britain and Europe must stop waiting for the past to return.

David Frum @davidfrum Writer, http://TheAtlantic.com; Host, The David Frum Show. Contact via https://davidfrum.com/page/contact or Producer@TheDavidFrumShow.com

Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond. Read Nick's latest column, Can Europe resist Trump's gangsterism? Does it have the willpower to try?

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Nick Cohen delivers his thoughts on the recent Holborn and St Pancras by-election results, where Labour comprehensively defeated the Green Party candidate, and its leader, Zack Polanski. Cohen criticises Polanski's leadership, particularly his absence during the controversial Green Party conference where motions on Israel and Palestine were debated, and highlighted how Jewish members' amendments were rejected. Nick talks about the broader implications for the Green Party's direction, comparing Polanski's approach to different "Islamist-leftist" political movements across Europe and North America, and warned about the potential for the Green Party to abandon environmental issues in favour of radical politics that could exploit fear and racism similar to right-wing parties. Nick concludes that the by-election result was beneficial for Labour's Andy Burnham, who can now present himself as the voice of sensible radical left politics while dismissing the Green Party as an irrelevance.

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