Profile Sebastian Payne: “Just grab any opportunity you can and don’t be picky!”

Former FT writer and Mildert alumnus speaks to Profile about his uni band, growing up in Gateshead and Miles Davis

Maddie Parker

Sebastian Payne is a think tank director, political journalist and Durham alumnus. Having been a student journalist whilst at Durham, he has gone on to write for The Spectator, the Financial Times, two books and has recently become director of the think tank, Onward.

I don’t use that phrase, ‘proud Durham alumnus’, lightly. Si ing down for a chat with Payne, it was hard to miss his choice of shirt – proudly emblazoned with the Van Mildert College crest. “This is vintage Mildert 2009” Payne said with a grin, and as a fellow Mildertian, I definitely approved.

We begin by discussing his university experiences – “There were so many! The first big thing I did was run Purple Radio from the end of my first year to the end of my second year. I did a radio show called ‘An Hour of Payne’ on Sunday night but then also I oversaw 12 hours of programming, six or seven days a week.

“I also did Palatinate - where I was Music Editor - and we were in this kind of ‘landfill indie’ stage where we had all these bands that were very popular and some of them are still going now, like The Wombats, Arctic Monkeys, The Killers”.

Beyond student journalism, Payne was also the Vice President of Van Mildert JCR where he found himself responsible for anything from budgeting to maintaining discipline at rowdy formal dinners. “Being JCR Vice President wasn’t party political, but you are actually doing stuff and we managed to revitalise the college finances, running lots of good social events, and doing freshers week. That is what I look back at - doing politics now - as a really great thing”.

Another fond memory for Payne was as bassist for the band ‘The Gatefold’ whilst at Durham. “We did all sorts of crazy gigs and one of them was a Back-to-School event at the DSU and there was nobody there at all! We had learnt all kinds of school related songs, including ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ by Pink Floyd, so eventually we just started playing. As we got to the very end of our set, loads of people turned up so we had to do the whole thing all over again! The security guard who was standing at the bar just said, “you were be er the first time”.

Over the past few years, Britain’s tumultuous political landscape has churned up scandals, drama, and intrigue in abundance leading me to ask Payne whether it’s a journalist’s dream or if he ever wishes it would all slow down.

“Well, if you’re a journalist you want the best stories to cover, so in that sense you never want it to calm down. With all the meaningful votes and late hours, it was proper parliamentary drama and the kind of thing you read about in textbooks about the 1970s where day-by-day the government was just trying to be propped up”.

“It was unbelievable, and I don’t think there will ever be another reporting time like that because you just didn’t know how it was going to end. Was the government going to fall? Was Theresa May going to get a Brexit deal?”.

Having recently left his post as Whitehall Editor of the FT, Payne is now director of the think tank, Onward.

It was proper parliamentary drama and the kind of thing you read about in textbooks ... I don’t think there will be another reporting time like that

“I have absolutely loved it so far. It is really fun to be running something and our view is that we have to win some big argumentswe have been pushing really hard on childcare reform and have started a debate in government on how we get mothers back into the workforce”.

“We have a big focus on levelling up and that was one of the things that drew me to Onward - I grew up in Gateshead and went to Durham, so for the first 21 years of my life I lived in the North-East where lots of places struggle with postindustrialisation and aren’t as prosperous as the South. We really are trying to focus on what we can do now before Westminster shuts down and gets into election mode.”

Alongside journalism, Payne has also wri en two books - the first, Broken Heartlands: A Journey Through Labour’s Lost England was published in 2021 with the second, The Fall of Boris Johnson, was released a year later.

“Broken Heartlands is partly a personal thing and the first chapters of that book start off in Gateshead and that is about me, my background, and the people I grew up with. In some respects, it is semiautobiographical so that was a very different thing to write.

“I often say that Broken Heartlands was finding ten different ways of saying ‘I sat on a cold park bench, two metres away from someone talking about why their town needed help”.

“The Boris Johnson one was very different - it was a bit more like conventional political journalism and had a timeline of events. Broken Heartlands is the book that is from my heart, and on balance I sort of preferred it because in 20 years’ time that story is going to ma er more. Many more books will be wri en about Boris!”

Broken Heartlands revolves around the red wall seats which historically voted Labour but supported the Conservatives in the 2019 general election, but will we see a swing back in 2024?

“My view is that the umbilical cord between working class England and the Labour Party had been pulled and Brexit snapped it. You come to this moment where people wanted to get Brexit done and they didn’t like Jeremy Corbyn. I mean if you wanted a caricature of someone that would not appeal to those places it would literally be him - combined with the fact that they did love Boris Johnson”.

“I think there have some very good Conservative MPs who got in for the first time and have a good chance of holding on to some of those places, like Richard Holden in North West Durham, who was great at campaigning and is now a cabinet minister. But I think a lot of it will depend on the national picture, with the government and the economy.”

The umbilical cord between working class England and the Labour Party had been pulled and Brexit snapped it

Payne has been at the heart of British politics and met all the big names that spring to mind.

“I think the person that I was most engaged with was Tony Blair as he was such a big figure during my childhood. I spent time with Boris during the Hartlepool by-election and watching him campaign there was kind of incredible. I wrote in my book that Boris was the Pied Piper in the middle of a hurricane. When he was walking through Hartlepool people were literally running out of their cars for selfies. I just don’t think there is any other politician, except maybe Blair in his prime that could have done that”.

“But to be able to capture those final moments was unbelievable. Tim Shipman from The Sunday Times described it as ‘a fly on the wall that felt he was on hallucinogenics’, because it was so crazy the way people were acting in Downing Street when it was all falling apart.”

I finish by asking Payne what advice he can offer budding writers at Durham.

“Fraser Nelson, who was one of the most helpful and influential people I worked with said that writing is like a muscle, and it is something that you have got to keep working on and that is often underestimated”.

“To break into national journalism, you have got to find a USP. For me, I had studied computer science so was good with data and maths and was able to adapt myself in a way others weren’t able to”.

“Just grab any opportunity you can and don’t be picky!”

You can read about more Sebastian Payne’s work on Onward’s website – h ps://www.ukonward. com

Quickfire

Hill or Bailey?

Hill

Best college bar?

Van Mildert

North or South of England?

Both

Best story?

I wrote about the secret plans to relocate Trident in the event of Sco ish independence and it took months.

Who’s going to win the next general election?

Too soon to tell!

If you could take one album on a desert island, what would it be?

In a Silent Way by Miles Davis. I like to think of it as 2am music - I listen to that whenever I need relaxing or a calming influence, so it would have to be up there