So, yeah, a listener pointed out that Jem had got some details about Andy Burnham’s career wrong, and he thought it was best to set the record straight, as well as follow up on a couple of other questions left open by the September 2025 Emergency Podcast. So here we are!

Rayner resigned! Mandelson sacked! ‘Mainstream’ launched! Your Party Chaos! Fascists on the Streets!
Alan Finlayson and Jeremy Gilbert bring you all the analysis they can fit into two hours of this truly momentous couple of weeks in UK politics…

For more information about Culture, Power and Politics see https://culturepowerpolitics.org

To book free tickets for ‘The Starmer Disaster’, our upcoming seminar with Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and Mark Perryman, go to https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-starmer-disaster-tickets-1685537260319?aff=oddtdtcreator

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In this episode, Jem offers a critical response to Adam Curtis’ oeuvre: an extraordinary series of fascinating, yet never-fully-satisfying, films about culture, power and politics in the epoch of advanced capitalism.

This is something that friends of the show have been requesting for years, so here it finally is!

For more information about Culture, Power and Politics see https://culturepowerpolitics.org

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Professor Alan Finlayson is back to discuss the latest developments in UK politics: the suspension of several Labour MPs and the announcement of a new left party to be led by Zarah Sultana and Jeremy Corbyn (maybe). We also discuss the vexed questions of why Starmer’s government is so unpopular after its first year in office, given the relatively progressive moves that they have made in some areas of policy.

To find out more about the podcast and the Culture, Power, Politics project, visit our website.

To find out more about the podcast, visit our website.

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‘Blue Labour’, an explicitly conservative tendency within the politics of the UK’s Labour Party, is said to be one of the few intellectual influences on the government of Keir Starmer.
So in this episode, Jeremy is joined by Alex Worrad-Andrews to answer the question on everyone’s lips: what is ‘Blue Labour’? 

We discuss the history of the term and concept ‘Blue Labour’, explore its philosophical, political and theological roots, and ask where, if anywhere, ‘Blue Labour’ is going. 

To find out more about the podcast and the Culture, Power, Politics project, visit our website.

To find out more about the podcast, visit our website.

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Jem is joined by medieval historian, comrade and friend of the show Eleanor Janega, to talk about what exactly is ‘feudal’ about ‘techno-feudalism’ or ‘neo-feudalism’. Several prominent theorists and commentators have recently claimed that somehow, we’ve left the age of capitalism behind and entered a new epoch of…some kind of ‘feudalism’. But what even is ‘feudalism’? What do these guys even mean by ‘capitalism’? And are they right about any of it?

To find out more about the podcast and the Culture, Power, Politics project, visit our website.

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Are we entering the world of ‘Techno-feudalism’, or ‘Neofeudalism’? Or are there better ways to understand our present situation, such as the concept of ‘Platform Capitalism’ ?

In this episode Jeremy Gilbert, discusses these issues and lays out what’s at stake in defining terms like ‘capitalism’ ‘technofeudalism’ and ‘mode of production’.

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Some of the texts that we refer to here include:

Cédric Durand How Silicon Valley Unleashed Techno-Feudalism : the Making of the Digital Economy
McKenzie Wark Capital Is Dead:Is This Something Worse?
Jodi Dean Capital’s Grave:Neofeudalism and the New Class Struggle

Evgeny Morozov ‘Critique of Techno-Feudal Reason’
Nick Srnicek Platform Capitalism

Jeremy Gilbert ‘Techno-feudalism or Platform Capitalism: Conceptualising the Digital Society’

Jeremy Gilbert & Alex Williams Hegemony Now: How Big Tech and Wall Street Won the World

Alan Finlayson returns for an in-depth discussion of the crisis of liberalism as an effective and legitimate philosophy of government, as exemplified by the success of the right-wing populist Reform party at the May 2025 UK local elections.

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In this seminar, Brian Massumi discusses his new book, The Personality of Power: A Theory of Fascism for Anti-fascist Life. Brian is one of the major figures of Anglophone continental philosophy in our age and a key figure in the dissemination of the work of Deleuze & Guattari.

This is part of our series From Marx to Spinoza: Affect, Ideology, Materiality, co-hosted by Andrew Goffey, Jason Read and Jeremy Gilbert. 

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In a just world, John Protevi would be far more famous than Slavoj Zizek. An expert on the ideas of Deleuze & Guattari (among many other things), his work brings together continental philosophy, analytical philosophy, rigorous science and political radicalism. In this recording he talks about his new book Regimes of Violence, ranging over topics from the politics of neoliberalism to evolutionary psychology to the beauty of sport.

This is part of our series From Marx to Spinoza: Affect, Ideology, Materiality, co-hosted by Andrew Goffey, Jason Read and Jeremy Gilbert.

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