EASTER SALE

Special offer to upgrade to paid

Dear Readers,

First of all, thank you. I really appreciate how many of you are interested in hearing my thoughts on politics and Labour. It means a great deal to me.

Secondly, I would like to offer you a special deal for those of you who are currently only receiving my whole posts fortnightly. I have no intention of dropping the fortnightly free posts for those of you who can’t afford to sign up to pay. But if you want access to all my content, I hope you will sign up.

Recent paid posts have covered my response to the Keir biography and the Mais lecture, thoughts on protests, the Tories destructive approach to leaving government and the myth of the ‘golden age’ of politics.

Each post takes about a day to conceive, write, rewrite and think about properly. I love doing it, but this is quite a lot of time out of what would normally be a weekend.

I get that there is a lot of competition out there. When I first started looking for a journalistic desk job, this coincided with a lot of high-profile redundancies that made it impossible for anyone to make a decision to hire a weird square peg like me when so many experienced or younger, more mouldable, journalists were available. Similarly, there are several brilliant, experienced and high-profile writers running hugely successful Substacks. The competition is fierce.

I am not great at self-promotion, but I do think I have an interesting and unusual perspective to offer. My ‘critical friend’ role with Labour is not unique, but if you combine it with twenty-plus years of insider/outsider status and the depth of my understanding not just of the Labour upper echelons but - vitally - the grassroots, I think this is a voice that is not often heard in the mainstream.

So if you do value that perspective (and my terrible puns) I would like to ask you to sign up to be a paid reader. And for less than it would cost you to buy me one coffee a month or the cost of a Nandos for us both once a year.

So from now until midnight on Monday, I am offering 15% off your first year as a paid subscriber, on both monthly and annual plans.

I do hope you will sign up and allow me to continue to share my analysis of what will be a pivotal year in British politics.