Steve Rayson

I have been obsessed by politics since 1974 when I put Liberal Party stickers on cars and lamp posts as a 12-year-old. By the time of the 1979 election I had joined the Labour Party Young Socialists and believed working-class people had everything to gain from socialism. The only problem was they didn’t agree with me. I would learn later that politics isn't all it seems at seventeen.

Later in life I surprised myself by becoming an entrepreneur. I co-founded three companies: BuzzSumo, Anders Pink & Kineo. I think it is an under-appreciated fact that teenage Trotskyists make great entrepreneurs. Trying to sell copies of Militant that say 'smash the capitalist system' outside of M&S is better than any sales training course.

In 2018 I went back to university full-time as an MSc politics student at the London School of Economics. Since then I have devoted myself to political research and writing.

My first book The Fall of the Red Wall became an Amazon bestseller in 2020. My second book Badgeland was a memoir about coming of age, politics, class and social mobility in the 1980s. My third book, Collapse of the Conservatives draws on hundreds of polls, surveys and focus groups to track how and why public opinion shifted so radically against the Conservatives, leading voters to take whatever stick was available to beat the government in a punishment election.