Lance Price

He also stated that Rupert Murdoch was the 24th member of Tony Blair's cabinet.

Lance Price (born 3 September 1958) is Chief of Staff to Kim Leadbeater, MP for Batley and Spen in the UK.

Price's involvement with the media continued after university, when he joined the BBC as a News Trainee, working there continuously from 1980 to 1998, taking a minor gap to travel from 1992 to 1993.

His career at the BBC touched on many topical issues of the time, covering the Northern Ireland Troubles for three years, then becoming a national radio and television reporter, Defence Correspondent, and finally a Political Correspondent based at Westminster.

As political correspondent and beyond, he interviewed every serving prime minister from James Callaghan to Tony Blair, and was the only journalist in Downing Street when the resignation of Margaret Thatcher was announced.

Whilst he was a Defence Correspondent, Price travelled on the first ever non-stop RAF flight from the UK to the Falkland Islands.

His other work with the BBC involved presenting programmes on BBC Radio Five Live, the BBC News Channel and fronting BBC Breakfast News after the Welsh devolution referendum.

He was a journalist for the BBC from 1981 to 1998, then became special adviser to Prime Minister Tony Blair, eventually assuming the role of Director of Communications for the Labour Party, coordinating the Labour Party election campaign of 2001.

He has published five books, and appears regularly on Sky News and the BBC.

Upon leaving the Labour Party, Price published the first insider account of Tony Blair's first term as prime minister, from 1997 to 2001.

After seventeen years as a BBC journalist, he joined Tony Blair's staff at 10 Downing Street in 1998, where he was deputy to the Communications Director, Alastair Campbell.

He was promoted to the Labour Party's Director of Communications from 2000 until the general election of 2001, playing a significant role in overseeing the party's victorious campaign.

Price was the first person to coin the phrase 'the nasty party' to describe the Conservative Party during his time with Labour.

He came up with the phrase while ghost-writing a statement by Tory defector, Ivan Massow, who was joining the party.

Price was the co-author and principal photographer for the Berlitz Guide to Iceland, published in 2003, and he maintains an active interest in travel and photography.

The Spin Doctor's Diary was published in September 2005 by Hodder & Stoughton.

Price appeared before the House of Commons Public Administration Committee to answer questions on the reasons for publishing the book; the Committee went on to recommend a new system of oversight for political diaries.

Price's second book was the satirical novel Time and Fate, published in October 2005.

This was a "take on what life was like for a family at the top of British politics".

Lance Price was called to give evidence to a Select Committee of the House of Commons in January 2006, in response to his first publication of The Spin Doctor's Diary.

The book caused considerable controversy when the British government tried to block its publication.

Despite the initial and ongoing controversy, The Spin Doctor's Diary was shortlisted for Political Book of the Year in the Channel 4 News Awards of 2006.

In 2008, it was named by GQ Magazine as one of the top 50 political books of all time.

Matthew Parris of The Times called the book "sensational".

It was criticised by Rafael Behr in The Observer for not taking us "close enough to the personalities or even the underlying motives of Campbell or Blair".

However, Sir Stephen Wall, a former advisor to Blair, said that "Lance Price was right to publish, and should not be damnned".

Boris Johnson, the then Mayor of London, reacted in his diary in the New Statesman: "Lance Price is a turd".

Price's second book, Time and Fate received generally favourable reviews: with Progress Magazine emphasising "The strong characterisation and compelling plotline [which] make Time and Fate a welcome, gripping page-turner…. a refreshingly engaging political novel in its own right."

In 2010, he published Where the Power Lies, analysing the relationship between past governments and the media.

The book was published before the phone-hacking scandal of 2010, and argued that successive British governments had been too close to powerful media interests, including Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

Price called for greater transparency about relationships between journalists and politicians.

He returned to active politics to help run her by-election campaign, having worked with her at the Jo Cox Foundation since the murder of her sister, who was MP for the constituency from 2015 to 2016.

He is also a writer, broadcaster and political commentator.

Price's fourth book, The Modi Effect, which details the rise of the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, was published by Hodder & Stoughton in 2015.

Price was born in Swanley, Kent and educated at Blackwell Primary School and Sackville Comprehensive School.

He received a First Class degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Hertford College, Oxford: here, his early interest for media and journalism was evident in his involvement with the student newspaper, Cherwell.

Whilst studying, Price became involved with the Birmingham Evening Mail and maintained an active membership of the Oxford Labour Club.

On 15 January 2015, Hodder & Stoughton announced Price's fourth book, The Modi Effect, an account of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's successful election campaign in 2014.

It was described as the "story of Modi's rise to power", which argued that "message-management and IT wizardry combined to create an election winning machine of fascinating power".

The book was released on 12 March 2015 and received favourable coverage.