Peter York's Culture Wars House Party

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

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

Gabriel Gatehouse is a former BBC international correspondent, a "Groucho Marx member" of the British establishment, and creator of The Coming Storm — the podcast and book that mapped the deep roots of American conspiracy culture from the Clinton wars to QAnon (was it kind of true?).We explore his view from fifteen turbulent months of Trump's second term — America as "empire in decline," Britain scrambling for new alliances — his unexpected detour into the "bonkers subject" of UFO documentaries, and what the Epstein files tell us about how power actually works at the very top.On Putin's view of Trump he's happy to speculate: "a useful idiot." On whether the weird stuff is still driving politics or has simply become Republican Party orthodoxy — that's where it gets complicated. Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social

Bonnie Greer is a Chicago‑born playwright, critic and public intellectual who has spent forty years decoding Britain from the inside—and America from a wary distance. From movies to Question Time, from Chicago to the upper reaches of British cultural life, she has watched the American dream and the British establishment at very close quarters. From Trump as a ‘mook’ to the politics of protecting “my stuff” and the possibilities of constitutional loopholes, Bonnie tells us how it is—what might really be happening to America, what the British never say out loud, and what it means to be standing on the edge of a “post‑America” world.Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social

Professor Marci Shore is a Yale historian of Eastern Europe, a scholar of 20th‑century totalitarianism, and, in her own words, “an early panicker”. We trace her journey from the archive to the front line of political alarm: her Titanic feeling the morning after the 2016 election, and the “epistemological advantages” of studying fascism. We talk about the fantasy of America versus its reality, and whether this is the end of the affair with Europe. We unpack the new techniques of power, the shameless lack of concealment, and what history tells us about the moment we’re living through—why denial is the West’s most dangerous luxury, and whether there is still time to act.Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social

David Aaronovitch is, in many people’s minds, the classic Hampstead political commentator: half‑Jewish, wholly metropolitan, former long‑time Times columnist and the calmly forensic voice of Radio 4’s The Briefing Room. From the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Henry Ford’s obsessions to today’s influencer‑economy cranks who monetise paranoia online, David traces what really motivates conspiracy theories, how they’ve evolved – and where simple denial shades into something darker.    From there, we wander through the new right‑wing networks and their culture‑war franchises: Matt Goodwin’s controversial picture of who ‘the elite’ really are, Viktor Orbán’s well-funded internationals, Nigel Farage’s theological policy guru and the grand narratives about ‘the war on Western civilisation’, migration, ULEZ, cyclists, feminism, low birth rates and Israel–Palestine that all add grist to the Culture Wars mill.  Along the way we touch on BBC cuts – whether David will keep his job - and whether the Corporation is still worth fighting for. And why, in 2026 it’s hard work being reasonable.Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social 

Michael Wolff, bestselling chronicler of Trump and Murdoch — and my very first guest on this podcast just before Trump took office — returns from a snow-blinded Hamptons to describe what Trump’s second term feels like to him, and why he has called it “a heartbreaking year and a frightening year.” He discusses how, in his view, a president presiding over “a government of one” can still bend an entire system around himself. Drawing on 100 hours of taped conversation with Jeffrey Epstein he explains how he interprets those files - what they reveal about power and the idea of a global elite.Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social

Professor Jason Stanley, philosopher of propaganda and fascism, now at the University of Toronto after a high‑profile departure from Yale to, as he puts it, “spit the truth”. He describes the US as “a white supremacist nation” and unpacks how that connects to its sky‑high incarceration rates, even while it’s enjoying some of its lowest levels of violent crime. From campus battles over what can and can’t be said about Israel, to classic fascist tactics and the quiet normalisation of far‑right ideas, he explains why the fascist Internationale ended up not working — and how power really does.Please do check out my latest book, A Dead Cat On Your Table – available online and in all good book shops.@peteryork.bsky.social