About Hopi

This is the bit about me. Feel free to skip.

My name is Hopi Sen. Really.

Escaping a lucrative career in advertising (which ended when I saw a lifetime of Daz adverts streching before me and resigned in panic) I started work for the Labour party as the Northern region press officer in 2000. After the 2001 election I moved to Party HQ, before becoming the head of campaigns at the Parliamentary Labour Party.  I had various stints on by-elections and General Elections- like working as a press officer to the Leader of the party during the 2005 campaign, a job that mostly involved feeding journalists chocolate and offending Quentin Letts.

Low grade political hacks of all parties have one thing in common: We’re desperate to impress you with how important we are.  So let’s be clear. I’m not important. At all.

When you find yourself trying to hide behind a tree because you’re in shot when a cabinet minister is giving his resignation statement, you come to terms with your lack of political significance.  When you find the same thing happening again a year later, you start being glad you’re the one behind the tree.

For six years I was one of those people who are occassionally glimpsed in the background of a photo-op, looking stressed in a cheap suit and in all likelihood sweating profusely. We’re a noble and maligned breed.

Now I’ve escaped. I work for a member of the House of Lords, and I write this little thing in my spare time. I should make clear that these are my views, not his, nor those of any other organisation or group. The slavish loyalty displayed herein is distressingly genuine.