Tristram Hunt

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Tristram Hunt became the Member of Parliament (Labour Party) for Stoke-on-Trent Central in May 2010. He is an historian, writer and broadcaster, who worked for Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson in a press office and Rapid Rebuttal capacity, as Special Adviser to David Sainsbury and has been linked to a number of pro-market ‘centre-left’ think tanks including Demos, IPPR and the New Local Government Network.

Education

Hunt initially attended ‘a state primary school, Milton Road in Cambridge’[1] until his ‘family moved to North London’[2] at which point he attended the elite University College School in Hampstead.[3] Hunt gained a First Class degree in history from the University of Cambridge (1995), before serving as an Exchange Fellow a year-long scholarship at the University of Chicago (1995-9).[4]

Into politics and spin

In September 2006 he

became an idealistic tea-boy in Tony Blair's Labour Party press office... ‘Tea-making was literally what I was doing at the start, in what was then a very small office. Everything got bigger and more exciting in the run-up to the 1997 general election, of course, and I was seconded to Millbank to the rapid rebuttal unit.
:We operated at the dirtier end of the campaign's political street-fighting, and soon became re-branded as the attack unit: “Wheels coming off John Major's Tory lie-machine!”’ [5]

He says he ‘was brought to its Millbank nerve centre by Peter Mandelson. "I wouldn't say I was Peter Mandelson's protege, although I'm a great fan of his. I worked in the press office and I can't emphasise how lowly I was. I was making tea - but not even tea for Tony, because I wasn't nearly important enough for that."’[6]

After the party's landslide victory, Hunt ‘co-wrote the encomium to New Labour, ‘’Blair's 100 Days’’, with the notorious former spin doctor Derek Draper. "It was terrible," chuckles Hunt. "I love Tony Blair; I think he's great, but in 10 years' time, academics will analyse it as an example of complete Blairite euphoria. It's full of gasping lines like 'Tony lifted a cup of tea to his lips and said, Alastair' It really has to be read to be believed." [6]

Science Media Centre

Hunt was involved in the setting up of the Science Media Centre and was a member of the initial Advisory Council which was set up in late 2001 'to establish the broader vision of the SMC and to raise the running costs'.[7] He may have been acting for David Sainsbury though he had – according to his own website - ceased to be a special adviser to Sainsbury in the year 2000. In November 2001 in the run up to the launch of the SMC Hunt penned a promotional piece of the SMC:

While much of society is now media-savvy, science has been left behind. Groups opposed to scientific research are always there to take the call. And scientists have shown a masochistic lack of interest in public debate; their preferred medium is the rarefied pages of peer-reviewed journals such as Nature. Scientists have a proper concern for the discipline of their method and are wary of speaking out before their thesis has been tested by colleagues… heavy. Pressure groups talk in the black- and-white language loved by reporters; academics are usually more diffident.
Scientists have been further scared away from public engagement by the media frenzy around GM technology in 1999, science's annus horribilis. The reduction of a complex branch of biological engineering to "Frankenstein food" was typical of media hopelessly ill equipped to discuss scientific progress rationally. And into the vacuum stepped big business. What inflicted the greatest damage on GM science was that the case for the defence was fronted by the bio-tech groups Monsanto and AstraZeneca.[8]

Hunt did not disclose his role in advising the SMC, however.

Affiliations

Contact

Website: tristramhunt.com
Twitter: @TristramHuntMP
Email: tristramhunt AT btopenworld.com | tristramhunt AT parliament.uk
Guardian: Profile

Notes

  1. ↑ Anna Bawden, Tristram Hunt: 'We've got to become the most interesting party' The Guardian, Monday 17 June 2013 19.15 BST
  2. ↑ Eleanor Radford Profiles: Tristram Hunt ~ his story, FE Week, May 17, 2013
  3. ↑ Andrew Pierce It's a bit rich for Tristram Hunt to play the posh card Daily Mail, UPDATED: 16:30, 2 November 2010
  4. ↑ Tristram Hunt About Tristram, accessed 17 August 2013
  5. ↑ David Belcher A war that split three kingdoms The Herald (Glasgow), December 10, 2001, Pg. 26
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Judith Woods 'I was too lowly to make Tony's tea' TV's new history man is 27, handsome and is already battling with his greatest rival - how can Tristram Hunt fail? Judith Woods meets him’ ‘’Daily Telegraph’’, November 30, 2001, Friday, Pg. 23
  7. ↑ Science Media Centre Consultation Report, March 2002.
  8. ↑ Tristram Hunt MEDIA: THE APPLIANCE OF SCIENCE; SCIENTISTS FEEL THAT JOURNALISTS DON'T UNDERSTAND THEM. A NEW MEDIA CENTRE COULD BRING THE TWO CAMPS TOGETHER, WRITES TRISTRAM HUNT' The Independent (London) November 20, 2001, Tuesday Pg. 8.
  9. ↑ Helena de Bertodano Don't call me Naked Tristram Hunt, the boyish presenter of the BBC's 'Civil War' series, has been dubbed history's answer to Jamie Oliver. But, he says, his presentation skills owe more to Peter Mandelson Sunday Telegraph(LONDON), January 13, 2002, Sunday, Pg. 03
  10. ↑ Tristram Hunt, MEDIA: TV MUST ATTRACT THE YOUTH VOTE; WHEN JOHN HUMPHRYS GRILLS A POLITICIAN THE YOUNG TURN OFF IN DROVES, SAYS TRISTRAM HUNT The Independent (London), February 27, 2001, Tuesday, P. 8.
  11. ↑ NLGN NEW LOCAL GOVERNMENT NETWORK ANNOUNCES NEW CHAIR AND KEY ADDITIONS TO BOARD OF TRUSTEES 18 March 2004, accessed 17 August 2013
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