David Lipsey, Baron Lipsey
David Lawrence Lipsey, Baron Lipsey was a British journalist and Labour Party politician.
Life and career
Lipsey was privately educated at Bryanston School, Dorset, and later studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Magdalen College, Oxford in 1968 and graduated with a First-Class degree, winning the university's Gibbs Prize in Politics in 1969.From 1970 to 1972 he was secretary of the Streatham Labour Party.
He went on to become a political adviser to Anthony Crosland in Opposition and an adviser to 10 Downing Street. He was responsible for the coinage of the name "New Labour" and the phrase "Winter of Discontent" applied to the period of British politics between September 1978 and February 1979.
From 1982 to 1983, he was chairman of the Fabian Society.
He worked as a journalist for a variety of different publications including the Sunday Times, The Times, The Guardian and The Economist, and in 1989 co-founded The Sunday Correspondent. He was awarded a Special Orwell Prize in 1997 for his work as 'Bagehot' in The Economist.
Lipsey was created a life peer as Baron Lipsey, of Tooting Bec in the London Borough of Wandsworth, on 30 July 1999. He sat on the Labour benches in the House of Lords. Lipsey held numerous senior posts in public life. As well as his economic and social interests, he chaired the All-Party Parliamentary group on Classical Music, was a patron of the Glasbury Arts Festival, a trustee of the Cambrian Orchestra Trust and chairman of the Sidney Nolan Trust, as well as a trustee of other arts organisations.
Lipsey was a fan of harness racing and greyhound racing. He was president of the British Harness Racing Club from 2008 to 2016. He was a longtime member of the All-Party Parliamentary Greyhound Group, which owned a number of greyhounds including Division Bell and Go Running Whip. He was also chair of the British Greyhound Racing Board from 2004 to 2009.
Lipsey died on 1 July 2025, at the age of 77, while swimming in the River Wye in Glasbury, Powys.