Mark Seddon
 Mark Seddon    ( journalist, author, academic, political activist) | |
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| Born | Mark Anthony Paul Seddon 7 October 1962 |
| Alma mater | University of East Anglia |
Recalls being sat alongside Peter Mandelson on Labour's National Executive Committee | |
Mark Seddon is a British journalist, author, academic and political activist. He is a former senior United Nations communications adviser, speech writer and former editor of Tribune.
On 4 February 2026, Mark Seddon was interviewed by George Galloway on MOATS and spoke at length about the Epstein files and Lord Mandelson's destructive influence on the Labour Party.[1]
Journalism
Seddon has written for The New York Times and The Boston Globe. He has been a diarist for the London Evening Standard and has contributed to The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, the Daily Mail, and The National (Abu Dhabi), as well as New Statesman, Private Eye, The Oldie and Country Life. He is a prolific writer for Tribune magazine, which he edited from 1993 until 2004.[2]
On television, Seddon has reported for the BBC from inside Iraq, North Korea and China, as well as for Sky News from Yemen and for Al Jazeera English from North Korea, Syria, Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia and Haiti. Seddon also reported regularly from the United Nations and from the White House, and has lectured widely in North America and the UK. He became the United Nations and New York City correspondent for Al Jazeera English in 2005, having helped set up and run the first ever Al Jazeera English TV New York Bureau. He later returned to the UK to continue as Al Jazeera English TV's Diplomatic Correspondent. He was an early guest on "Have I Got News for You", and has appeared as a commentator on numerous UK and US television and radio programmes, including Newsnight, Channel 4 News, Breakfast with Frost, The Politics Show and the Today programme.[3]
From 2014 to 2016, Seddon worked in the Communications and Speechwriting Unit for the Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon.[4] He subsequently became Director of Communications for the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity, chaired by UN Special Envoy for Global Education and former UK Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. In September 2017 he became an adjunct professor in International Relations at Columbia University, New York, in the Harriman Institute.[5] He returned to New York in August 2018, to work as Media Adviser to the President of the UN General Assembly, 73rd Session at UN Headquarters.
Political activist
Active in the Labour Party, Seddon worked for Gordon Brown during the UK/General election/1992. After Brown became Chancellor of the Exchequer, Seddon served for five years on the Chancellor's Economic Policy Commission. Seddon was elected to Labour's National Executive Committee as a Grassroots Alliance candidate in 1997, gaining the highest share of the vote. Re-elected several times, he remained an NEC member until standing down in 2005. In the UK/General election/2001, Seddon ran for parliament in the safe Conservative seat of Buckingham, against future Speaker John Bercow.
In 2002, he was controversially removed from the shortlist to be Labour's candidate in the Ogmore by-election. Seddon was a vocal critic of many aspects of the last Labour government in the UK, particularly over the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He also opposed Britain's involvement in the war in Afghanistan from the outset. He backed Mayor of London Ken Livingstone's ultimately successful attempt to be readmitted to the Labour Party. In 2011 he published an autobiography, "Standing for Something – Life in the Awkward Squad" about his time as a dissenter within New Labour and as a foreign TV reporter.
After leaving the Labour Party NEC in 2005, he became the United Nations and New York City correspondent for Al Jazeera English, before returning to the UK to continue as Al Jazeera English TV's Diplomatic Correspondent. In 2011 he became the media advisor and speechwriter for the directly elected mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman.
Seddon has campaigned for justice for the Chagossians of the British Indian Ocean Territory for 30 years. He was active in the campaign for new elections in the Maldives, following the toppling of that country's first democratic President, Mohamed Nasheed in a coup in 2012. Nasheed was an old school friend, and Seddon had backed his campaign for democracy in the Maldives.
Books
- "Standing for Something – Life in the Awkward Squad" by Mark Seddon and Martin Rowson (26 September 2011), Biteback Publishing ISBN 978-1-84954-123-7
- "Jeremy Corbyn and the Strange Re-birth of Labour England" by Mark Seddon and Francis Beckett, illustrated by Martin Rowson (September 2018), Biteback Publishing
- "Great British Elms, The remarkable story of an iconic tree and its return from the brink", by Mark Seddon and David Shreeve MBE, Photography by Sam Ford (2024) Kew Publishing
References
- ↑ "INTERVIEW: Mandelson had more returns from under the ice than Rasputin"
- ↑ "Mark Seddon at Tribune"
- ↑ "Al-Jazeera hires ex-Tribune editor"
- ↑ https://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/news/politics/tower_hamlets_mayor_s_speechwriter_leaves_to_work_for_united_nations_general_secretary_ban_ki_moon_1_3119385/
- ↑ "Mark Seddon, Lecturer in International Affairs at Columbia University"
