David is a ‘left-wing traditionalist’. He runs an arts charity in the North East of England and works as a political writer. He runs the ‘class-first’ Labour group ‘Restoration’.

He can speak on your programme about:

Politics:
- Social class and politics, particularly how working class voters lean toward right wing parties
- The values of metropolitan cities vs provincial towns
- Against identity politics from a left wing perspective
- Controlling immigration from a left wing perspective
- Respecting Brexit and against EU integration

Economics:
- Deindustrialisation and reindustrialisation
- Automation and competition with China
- Technology, worker monitoring and social media addiction

Arts and Culture:
- Working class exclusion from the arts, cultural spaces and museums

In bullet points

• David is a writer and political activist based in London, he grew up in post industrial Sunderland and worked in call centres there after university.

• He writes about class, politics and the arts for Unherd, New Statesman, The Critic, Spiked and others.

• Before politics he worked as a support worker for homeless and disabled people

• He has been a guest contributor at GB News, Times Radio, The Daily Telegraph, Politics Joe and Drowned In Sound.

• David founded Labour Beyond Cities in 2019 and Restoration in 2024. These projects intend to find ways to ensure the left is less dominated by degree educated, metropolitan liberals living in Britain’s major cities.

• Restoration’s slogan is ‘Make Labour Working Class Again’.

• Restoration has had unexpected success in Labour. The group won a a candidate election to Labour’s National Executive Committee. It now has over 500 supporters in Labour parties around the UK.

• David was a 2025 Churchill Fellow and has travelled to Japan, the USA, Denmark and France to look at blue collar and working class representation in politics.

• His book ‘Class Dismissed: How Working Class People Were Kicked Out Of Politics And What Can Be Done About It’ is currently optioned by Polity Press

• His group in Labour have longstanding links to industrial Britain: car union reps, Scunthorpe steel union, Grangemouth Oil plant.
  

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