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.

13 Comments

  • i think you are brilliant Hopi and not in any way a Blairite no neck relic.

  • That’s very kind Anna. People have often mentioned how long and elegant my neck is.

  • Hopi -

    You need a way to contact you through this site. Can you email me? I’ve lost your mobile, your email, well…I’ve lost everything.

    T

    PS Beautiful site. Lots of lovely white space and great fonts. I think I need to improve mine again.

  • Spot the Waste of Space
    November 14, 2007 at 12:39 am

    Why you and the other reasonably literate NuLabour blogs feed that inbred Chris Paul with all the information that he turns into his so-called blog beats me. It just makes him feel important and he ain’t!

  • Surely a lifetime of Daz adverts is preferable to New Labour ?At least the Daz washes the dirt away.

  • I wondered where you had got to. Good site ! I have indexed it………..

  • Interesting finally to get the biography behind the blog!

  • Hopi,
    Blast from the past!!
    Great site….. In my favourites.

  • parburypolitica
    January 5, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    Hi Hopi just added you to my new feed reader. Keep up the good work.

  • you didn’t - by any chance, used to go to woodstock elementary?

    [the guy i remember, his name was hopi too, although we also had a cree, kiowa, lakota, etc ;) ]

  • What’s wrong with working on Daz?

  • Andy- good to see you- come on- can’t expect to admit that I wasn’t that good a brand manager? got a reputation to protect (errrr. dammit..).

    How’s you? Enjoying Geneva?

  • When there is high employment, low interest rates, improving prospects and a main opposition party whose policies are relevant to only 10% of the electorate, the labour party just needs to talk more effectively, more directly to individuals and keep its campaigners positive.

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