I know NOTHING about politics. How can I start to learn?

You are doing great @MeAgainAndAgain! All the above suggestions are good but I want to put in a special plea. Don't confine yourself to UK politics but cultivate an interest in other countries and in global politics, what happens between countries. That might sound like a tall order given where you are now, but given that we are all interconnected and have international relationships it's a false boundary to only look at the UK.
And my best recommendation on where to start with this, apart from many of the podcasts and newspapers already mentioned that will take international perspectives as well as UK perspectives is to listen to the BBC World Service.
Best of luck. The desire to learn is your greatest asset and motivator.

It might perhaps depend on where you’re starting from, @MeAgainAndAgain.

Did you take History GCSE or equivalent? Was there any political element in your degree if you have one? Are you a member of a union? Do you donate to a global or local charity and understand why they exist? Do you have any non-UK heritage whose politics you can draw on for comparison? Do you speak any other languages?

Importantly - how much do you read? I can promise you if you make a project of Anthony Trollope’s novels you’ll feel far more informed in six months time. (And will have been hugely entertained.)

All this is easy for me to say - I did study Constitutional Law as part of my Law degree, and have generally been a voracious reader of fiction - but I have no sophisticated thoughts on any Conservative politician, at all. Swearwords usually suffice …

True renheadlines, but an hour commute with good WiFi gave me plenty of time to scan!

Reading all the papers every day is impossible for most. You can subscribe to each ones main headlines to your inbox which is educational in itself.

Agree re watching the news and reading newspapers. I read a spectrum every day, to attempt to cut down bias, e g Guardian, independent, mail, sun, mirror, times etc. Also sometimes the NY times and Washington post, you're allowed a couple of articles a month on those for free. The news stuff isn't pay walled generally, just the comment on some sites.

Also agree about chatting with friends.

Just keep following along but make an effort to find out who people are by googling their names, finding out the context of who they are and what they’ve done. The more you pay attention the more you understand and eventually you start seeing the nuances beyond the basics. It takes time and you can never stop learning more so there’s not really an end point.

If you're more of an auditory person you could try some podcasts. I like The News Agents featuring Jon Sopel, Emily Maitlis and Lewis Goodall. They discuss some topic of interest every weekday, including US politics occasionally, and in the last 6 weeks did lots of very good informational episodes about the general election. They're online at The News Agents - Podcast (globalplayer.com) and on all the major streamers.

You could probably get a basic book on politics, but listening to a podcast (free) regularly would be a good start. Suggest Rest is Politics or the Newsagents.

Hiya, OP, I really understand where you're coming from as I used to feel like this. I came from a family where politics wasn't discussed (but I am an expert on cricket 😂)

I think it's a case of "when the pupil is ready the teacher will come" . . . now that you're interested in learning you will find lots of ways of picking up information, almost without realising it

Information is everywhere . . . leaflets posted through the door, TV news, documentaries, etc etc

One way I learned was when I heard friends or colleagues talking about politics and I didn't understand, I would ask a question and, bit by bit, I learned what the current issues were

It's a life time of learning as everything changes so quickly! HTH

Well, you’ve mentioned two helpful starting points - but then dismissed them.

You don’t have to pay, but subscribing to a broadsheet newspaper online will mean you can easily read a few articles every day. The more you read, the more you’ll understand the political background. (I subscribe to The Times, The New York Times and to the FT (the latter mostly for frivolous weekend stuff) and probably browse Al Jazeera, The Guardian and at least a couple of foreign news sources every day.)

And the Today programme still feels to me an unmissable start to the day. Don’t really watch morning TV news unless at a hotel. But like the pp I’ve been listening to R4 and talking about the new since I was a child more than 50 years ago.

Channel 4 News is worth watching in the evening if you have the time and energy.

Beyond those …

If you have a child in the house (or even if you don’t!) there’s a DK book called Who’s In Charge, with a forward by Andrew Marr. We have the 2010 edition, don’t know if it’s been updated. Excellent thing.

I was advised to start listening to R4 when I started a business related qualification in my 20s. So the today programme is a good start.

What do you do for work? Getting a job in the public sector helps link a lot of things together about the impacts of policies and local and national politics.

Lots of good insta pages, simple politics for example. Lots of satire accounts also. Munya Chawawa can be quite funny and did a lot of informative work across the election campaign around voting etc.

I was also really interested in programmes like have I got news for you as a (very strange) child. The last leg are running a special tonight at 10pm. I definitely picked up a lot of my knowledge from satirical programmes!

Listen to bbc radio 4 regularly / read the news / watch the news.

Well listening to the today programme is probably a good start. I honestly don't know politics was discussed in my house as a child, we listened to current affair radio programmes at primary school. I read a daily news paper from around 14. I just don't know how you can't know. I realise that isn't helpful. Try Newscast on I-player