David Lipsey

According to Tom Easton's account:

George Robertson was helped in the task of selecting promising transatlantic talent for the early years of the BAP by David Lipsey, a man who also started life as a researcher with the GMWU. After Oxford Lipsey got to know and admire Anthony Crosland, the Gaitskellite MP, author of The Future of Socialism and one-time consultant to the CIA-funded Congress for Cultural Freedom.

Crosland became Lipsey's mentor, hiring him as adviser at the Department for Environment and then at the Foreign Office. After Crosland's death in 1977, Lipsey moved to the office of Prime Minister James Callaghan. With the defeat of Labour in 1979 Lipsey switched to journalism, first at New Society and then the Sunday Times before returning as editor of New Society in 1986.

At the time he was helping to launch the BAP he was also involved in setting up the Sunday Correspondent, the short-lived and largely US-funded weekly. When it folded in 1990 he became associate editor of Murdoch's Times, quitting that for the Economist in 1992 and becoming its political editor two years later. Along the way he has been chairman of the Fabian Society, a visiting professor at the University of Ulster and a non-executive director of the Personal Investment Authority.

Affiliations

Source: House of Lords Register of Members Interests, July 2006.

Remunerated directorships

• Chair, Shadow Racing Trust
• Chair, British Greyhound Racing Board

Membership of public bodies

Council, Constitution Unit

• Advisory Group, Centre for Research into Elections and Social Trends
• Sponsors' Advisory Board, Centre for the Study of Gambling

Office-holder in pressure groups or trade unions

• Chair, Make Votes Count

Office-holder in voluntary organisations

• Chair, Social Market Foundation
• Trustee, Retired Greyhound Trust
• President, British Harness Racing Club

Not in his register of interests:

• Member British American Project