Peter Tatchell is Britain's most recognisable gay rights activist. He traces five decades of culture wars: from a teenage firebrand in 1960s Australia, inspired by the Black civil rights movement, via Communist East Berlin, to today — and "why things are not over by a long shot."

We talk about how LGBT+ rights, and especially trans rights, got turned into frontline ammunition in the modern culture wars. Who's really behind the anti-trans movement? Why Tatchell believes it's being steered from the right. And what the Supreme Court ruling actually says — as opposed to what you've been confidently told it says.

Along the way, Tatchell explains why he thinks the hate and disinformation machine has gone into overdrive — and why he believes we are heading into a "very, very dark period" for democracy.

Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.

@peteryork.bsky.social

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Rob Ford, professor of politics at Manchester University, has been a long-time watcher of the BNP, UKIP, Brexit and now Reform UK — explaining who these new right-wing insurgents really are, and why they're suddenly everywhere.

We find out why "the numbers game matters", why he thinks we're in "the most unstable moment", and explore the great whirlpool of resentment that immigration only partly explains.

Along the way: brand management, manufactured authenticity, and a cautionary tale about what happens when an ambitious academic reads his audience a little too well – "the brand has also become a prison."

But there are reasons to be cheerful too — Farage's "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" Reform model may be far less roadworthy than Trump's Rolls Royce.

Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.

@peteryork.bsky.social

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

Professors Sam Friedman and Aaron Reeves of the London School of Economics, authors of Born to Rule – a forensic, often very funny X‑ray of the British establishment, drawn from that venerable directory of importance, Who’s Who. They’ve tracked thousands of the people who matter to discover who really holds power, how they got it, and why they’d rather you thought they were “just ordinary”.

We talk about the “elite within the elite” (how many do you reckon there are?); the three factions inside the elite who “are contesting what Britain should look like” – and how that’s shifting; the importance of being “meritocratically legitimate”; and how the privately educated Nigel Farage manages to pull it off.

Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.

@peteryork.bsky.social

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