Twelve years ago, I registered the domain name thelondoneconomic.com with the web hosting platform GoDaddy. With the effects of the financial crash being realised, the mood in the country was downbeat as communities were hit by austerity measures brought in to ensure Britain “lived within its means”, even though the debt they’d been saddled with had little to do with those who ultimately footed the bill. Overnight, resentment coupled with the slow beat of government rhetoric and a right-leaning media led to the finger being pointed at two of the most vulnerable groups in society; poor people and immigrants. It didn’t take long for a country hooked on poverty porn and a steady diet of migrant myths to fall into the warm embrace of populism, and so it has proved.
In 2023, when Gary Lineker spoke out about the government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to “safe third countries” like Rwanda he was right to point out that the language being used by the then-home secretary, Suella Braverman, was as much a cause for concern as the plan itself. As the Auschwitz museum reminds us, the Holocaust didn’t start with the gas chambers. It “gradually developed from words, stereotypes and prejudice”, from ruling parties diving citizens into ‘us’ and ‘them’ and controlling the message thanks to a compliant media. If you were to describe a media ecosystem that protects the establishment and denigrates marginalised groups, you’d be hard-fetched to devise a better one than the one we have in place now. And most cruelly of all, most people think it is those oligarchs, those billionaires that pull the strings of the most divisive politicians, that are on their side.
The London Economic was set up as an antidote to that particular poison, becoming, as our parent group now puts it, a ‘tonic to toxic’. With no money, no connections and no resources, we grew to become one of the biggest political news publications in the country based on the simple belief that not everyone believes the diatribe contained in the pages of the Daily Mail. For the most part, that journey has been extraordinarily rewarding. In recent months, TLE has reached up to 80 million people across platforms with a threadbare team, which includes millions of people engaging with our content. But cash is most certainly not king when it comes to running a progressive media outlet and punishing algorithms, scant resources, and around-the-clock working patterns require huge personal sacrifices that, with the imminent arrival of my first child, I am no longer willing to shoulder.
It is with that in mind that I have decided to step down as the editor of The London Economic, leaving the publication in the capable hands of Charlie Herbert and the Joe Media Group. But I do so in the knowledge that TLE has never been in better shape. The very fact that we still exist in spite of all the challenges we have faced is a testament to the people who have shunned divisive and populist channels and found a home in the pages of our website, our social media feeds or in our newsletter, where we champion progressive voices, out the populists and put the spotlight on good people doing good things.
In 2018, I penned a piece for our fifth anniversary highlighting a story we had published about a hard-working woman living on the poverty line who couldn’t afford to replace her boiler at Christmas. A few days later, one of our readers stepped in to help her out. That’s what media should be about. Not the sensationalism, the cronyism, the misinformation and the culture wars that it has become. It can and should be a force for good, and that, for the past 12 years, has been my pursuit. Our reach is a credit to the people who believe in that too, and I feel humbled by what it has become as both a voice of reason and a symbol of resilience.
Thank you to all who have made it possible.