Matthew Taylor (Labour Politician) - Career

Career

Taylor became a Warwickshire county councillor and fought Warwick and Leamington in the 1992 general election, pulling Labour up into second place, before joining the Labour Party's staff in 1994. He became the Party's Campaign Co-ordinator, then Director of Policy during the 1997 general election victory. He played an important role in drawing up the manifesto and the Party's high-profile pledge-card and developing the Excalibur rapid rebuttal database that was used to campaign against the Conservative Party. Taylor became Assistant General Secretary of the Labour Party under Margaret McDonagh but clashed with her and left in December 1998.

He moved on to be Director of the left wing think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research. Some IPPR trustees were uncomfortable about appointing someone so closely associated with the Labour government, but he reformed the Institute's profile and output. Taylor became a familiar face on current affairs programmes such as Newsnight.

Following this he was appointed by Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair to head the Number 10 Policy Unit, being charged with drawing up the Labour Party's manifesto for the May 2005 general election. Following the re-election of the Labour government he was given the post of Chief Adviser on Strategy to the Prime Minister. He was associated with several initiatives to engage the public with the political process and played a key role in developing the Labour Party's "Big Conversation" discussion forums. He left in 2006 to take up his current role at the RSA. He is now a frequent blogger.

At the end of a talk by Sir Ken Robinson at the RSA, he admitted that he hadn't appreciated the difficulties with education policy whilst working for the government.

If you are sitting in Downing Street, or a department or in Conservative central office, you think "Oh we can't possibly have that, because it doesn't always work". But the point is that in order for it to be something which always works, it wouldn't work. And I understand that now, I didn't understand that when I was in government, I want to apologise, to you and to the world, but I do understand it now. —Matthew Taylor, on Opening Minds at the RSA, "The Element", Ken Robinson at the RSA

Ken Robinson quipped back "If you have had this moment, Matthew, I'd like us all to be quiet and share it".