I’m an author and, since January 2020, President of the Liberal Democrats. In February 2025 I joined the House of Lords as a Life Peer.
My books include Polling UnPacked: The History, Uses and Abuses of Political Opinion Polls, 101 Ways To Win An Election and Bad News: what the headlines don’t tell us.
I also host the Never Mind The Bar Charts podcast.
I helped found and then later was co-editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and now run Liberal Democrat Newswire, the monthly email newsletter about the Liberal Democrats. I also run The Week in Polls.
I worked for the Liberal Democrats 2000-2009, including a period as Head of Innovations and running the party’s digital and data operation for the 2001 and 2005 general elections. In 2015 I wrote with David Howarth the seminal pamphlet on the party’s strategy: The 20% Strategy: building a core vote for the Liberal Democrats.
Outside the Liberal Democrats, I have worked in IT in both the university and private sectors. Between 2009 and 2019, I was a communications and crisis consultant, including stints as Head of Digital at MHP Communications and Associate Director at Blue Rubicon and then Teneo.
I have also been a member of the Electoral Commission’s Political Parties Panel and a Visiting Lecturer at City University in the Journalism Department.
I have a history PhD from the University of York, looking at nineteenth-century elections.
Photographs
If you need a picture of me, you can use the above photograph freely, including for commercial purposes.