Nick is editor of Progressive Review, IPPR’s journal of politics and ideas, and a Senior Research Fellow in the Democracy and Politics team.

Previously an advisor and speechwriter to Rachel Reeves as Shadow Chancellor, and an occasional Treasury speechwriter, he authored and contributed to five party conference speeches, as well as a budget, a spring statement, and a spending review. As a key contributor to a range of pamphlets and lectures, including two Mais Lectures, he played an important role in defining the current government’s economic agenda.

Nick is a political and intellectual historian of contemporary Britain, with expertise in progressive politics, the development of British urban and communities policy, local economic policies, and the theory and practice of participatory democracy in the UK.

His DPhil, completed at the University of Oxford, explores the British left and the politics of community after 1968. He traces how a range of political actors, across the Labour, Liberal and Social Democratic parties, as well as the radical left, sought to renew progressive politics through different visions of “community”, in response to the rapid social and economic changes of the late twentieth century. In doing so, he sheds new light on the origins of New Labour and the development of urban policy since the 1960s. His academic work, like his work at IPPR, is concerned with how progressives can respond to political change, and the relationship between ideology and policy implementation.

Nick also previously served as editor of Renewal: A Journal of Social Democracy, and has worked as a researcher and editor for a number of political and historical books. He also holds a BA and MA in History from Queen Mary University of London.