Tom Baldwin (journalist)

Tom Baldwin is a British journalist, author and former Labour Party senior adviser.[1] He has worked as a journalist for a number of national titles including The Times and The Sunday Telegraph. He was also a senior political adviser to Ed Miliband and director of communications & strategy at the Labour Party. He has written a book, Ctrl Alt Delete, about technology's "abusive relationship with truth in media and politics" over the past 30 years.[2] He was communications director at the People's Vote campaign.

Baldwin was educated at Lord Williams comprehensive school in Thame and Balliol College, Oxford where he studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics.

He started his career in journalism at the Newbury Weekly News before moving to The News, Portsmouth and then The Sunday Telegraph where he became political editor. Later, at The Times he worked as deputy political editor, Washington bureau chief, chief reporter and Assistant Editor. He was responsible for breaking the scandal of Bernie Ecclestone's secret donation to the Labour Party[3] and was injuncted by the Home Office when he leaked the report of the Macpherson report into the murder of Stephen Lawrence.[4] However, he was generally regarded as pro-Labour and, in his book, acknowledges his own role in the media's degeneration over recent years.[5]

In 2010, he was appointed as head of communications for the Labour Party and also worked as Senior Adviser to Ed Miliband.[6][7] He ended this role in after Labour's defeat in the 2015 general election. He later worked as director of communications at the People's Vote campaign which called for a new referendum on Brexit. In October 2019, he was controversially sacked along with thre campaign's director, James McGrory, by Roland Rudd, the chair of one of the groups in the People's Vote alliance, just days after organising a million-strong march through London.[8] More than 40 members of staff walked out in protest at the sackings and Baldwin attacked Rudd for putting a "wrecking ball" through the campaign at a crucial moment in politics.[9][10] Rudd was later forced to step down from his role.[11]

Works
  • Baldwin, Tom (2019). Ctrl Alt Delete : how politics and the media crashed our democracy. Hurst. p. 320. ISBN 9781787380066.
gollark: I wonder how hard/expensive it'd be to run your own channel on the satellite system if there are THAT many.
gollark: We have exciting TV like "BBC Parliament".
gollark: Analog TV got shut down here ages ago.
gollark: So I guess if you consider license costs our terrestrial TV is *not* free and costs a bit more than Netflix and stuff. Oops.
gollark: - it funds the BBC, but you have to pay it if you watch *any* live TV, or watch BBC content online- it's per property, not per person, so if you have a license, and go somewhere without a license, and watch TV on some of your stuff, you are breaking the law (unless your thing is running entirely on battery power and not mains-connected?)- it costs about twice as much as online subscription service things- there are still black and white licenses which cost a third of the priceBut the enforcement of it is even weirder than that:- there are "TV detector vans". The BBC refuses to explain how they actually work in much detail. With modern TVs I don't think this is actually possible, and they probably can't detect iPlayer use, unless you're stupid enough to sign up with your postcode (they started requiring accounts some years ago).- enforcement is apparently done by some organization with almost no actual legal power (they can visit you and complain, but not *do* anything without a search warrant, which is hard to get)- so they make up for it by sending threatening and misleading letters to try and get people to pay money

References
  1. Parker, George (20 August 2018). "Control Alt Delete, by Tom Baldwin". Financial Times.
  2. Rawnsley, Andrew (2018-07-23). "Ctrl Alt Delete: How Politics and the Media Crashed Our Democracy – review". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  3. Peston, Robert (2008-10-30). Who Runs Britain?: ...and who's to blame for the economic mess we're in. Hodder & Stoughton. ISBN 978-1-84894-016-1.
  4. MacAskill, By Ewen; Pallister, David; Dodd, Vikram (1999-02-22). "Straw's move to stem leak brings defeat". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  5. Aaronovitch, David. "Review: Ctrl Alt Delete: How Politics and the Media Crashed Our Democracy by Tom Baldwin — politics versus the iPhone". ISSN 0140-0460. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  6. "Miliband unveils chief spokesmen". BBC News. 14 December 2010.
  7. "Miliband's new spinner offers fire and fury". www.newstatesman.com. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  8. Adams, Tim (2019-10-19). "People's Vote march: from every corner of the land they came, to join a very British rebellion in the rain". The Observer. ISSN 0029-7712. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  9. Bloom, Dan (2019-10-28). "People's Vote in open warfare as staff stage walkout amid 'wrecking ball' attack". mirror. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  10. "People's Vote: Tom Baldwin vs Roland Rudd". BBC News. Retrieved 2020-05-05.
  11. Syal, Rajeev (2019-11-15). "Roland Rudd exits People's Vote amid continuing rancour". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-05-05.

Further reading


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