Peter York's Culture Wars House Party
Danny Dorling: Brexit Myths and Britain’s Inequality Crisis
Published: 16 April 2026 at 10:50 Europe/London
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Episode notes
Professor Danny Dorling, Oxford social geographer and professional spoiler of comfortable assumptions about Britain. He explains how geography began as imperial management and maps the link between empire and inequality that still shapes Britain’s place at the top of Europe’s inequality league table.
Danny shows how we went from our most equal moment in the 60’s and 70’s to today’s extremes, why the first faint signs of rising equality feel bad, and how the right feeds off the fear that inequality breeds. We talk “wealth creators”, British exceptionalism in private schooling, and how the elite consensus on climate change was broken.
Was it really Red Wall voters wot won the Brexit vote? Danny tells the true social‑geography story of Leave and how the media stigmatised the result.
We then ask why the “nice” left keeps failing to capitalise on its winning story – from the ‘dead cat’ tactic versus the long hard slog, to how Trump has changed trolling and warped the ecology of think tanks.
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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