A farewell to The Lead
Our founding editor, Dimi Reider, is moving on. He shares parting thoughts on where the UK is heading, on the magazine's first years, and on its future. Plus: Our favourite stories of 2024.
Three years ago next month,
texted me to ask if I was free to grab a pint and talk about a new project. He also wanted to confirm I was professionally “footloose and fancy-free”; and topped the conversation off with “Mike’s coming too.” Mike was publisher Mike Harris, and the project was what would become The Lead, although the working title was Stories and Acts; a bit too apostolic for my liking.The project itself, though, was too good to miss: a new, progressive online magazine combining journalism and campaigning, a chance to handpick my own team and a generous commissioning budget. All startups are born in chaos, riveting to the founders and mystifying to their audience; so I’ll spare you. Instead, I wanted to use my last editorial to reflect on what The Lead set out to do politically, what it ended up achieving, and why I think such projects will become only more important as the Labour’s term wears on.
Our overall editorial position on parliamentary politics hasn’t changed much, so far, since when we launched in 2022. It was already obvious then that Keir Starmer was going to take Labour into the next election; it was obvious Conservatives didn’t deserve another chance and wouldn’t be getting any; and it was also already obvious that Starmer’s painstakingly measured, hyper-centrist approach might be a winning election strategy, but would be a disaster if it was taken, unaltered, into government.
Starmer has a tank full of gas, he’s putting pedal to the metal, but he’s terrified of moving up from second gear.
At the same time, it was also obvious that the Starmerites had won the eternal factional war within Labour decisively—too decisively for their own good, really—and that any critique perceived to be coming from Corbynist nostalgia or anti-Starmer prejudice would be written off. So even if all of us were uniformly on the further Left (and our spectrum was never quite as narrow), there was little point in launching another, say, Novara Media, not least because Novara was already doing Novara very well.
What we did want to do—alongside factual and unbiased reporting on climate, racism, housing, immigration and many other issues—was to sidestep factionalism, but to start building the case for Labour to do better, especially once in power; to govern more ambitiously than they campaigned, and to use their historic majority to shift not only lines in the budget, but the very boundaries of Britain’s political discourse. Fourteen dreary years of Conservatism left Britain poorer, colder, weaker; despondent, fearful and small. Fixing it would require firing up voters’ belief that we not only “deserve” better, but could do better, together; encouraging that belief by immediate, tangible improvements to everyday life in the first year after the election; and using the political capital to push through long-term, ambitious changes.
Paid subscriber? Join Dimi for a farewell Ask-Me-Anything session. Chatroom will be open from 10am to 4pm Monday. If you’re not yet a paid subscriber, upgrade here.
We are now more than six months after the election, and almost all our fears are playing out. Labour certainly do have ambitious plans, although these, too, feel patchy and selective, not really coalescing into an inspiring narrative whole. But it is failing—if it’s even trying—to shift the Overton window. It’s still behaving as if it’s trying to win an election by a whisker, instead of capitalising on already winning the biggest landslide in almost 30 years.
This maddening timidity is obvious on a whole range of domestic issues; but it’s particularly grotesque on Gaza, where Labour seem to prefer to stand by in the face of overt, live-streamed ethnic cleansing by a close ally, rather than use its leverage to stop it but be accused of reviving Corbynism; despite zero evidence this is how voters would perceive it, or that it would hurt Labour electorally.
In short: Starmer has a tank full of gas, he’s putting the pedal to the metal, but he seems terrified of moving up from second gear. If he keeps at it, Labour risks burning up its electoral fuel, wrecking the car, and never reaching its destination.
Given that Labour seems determined to keep at it, I’d say the need for a publication like The Lead is only going to grow over the coming years - and I hope the editors and writers that come after will find new ways of getting progressive leaderships to listen, before the extreme Right capitalises on that same disillusionment and anger in 2028.
The best hope for democracy is local
Over my time as editor, we’ve published well over 1,000 stories in the national edition alone (some recent favourites are below). But by far the best thing we’ve done, for which I can honestly take fairly little credit, was setting up our Northern newsroom, led by Ed Walker and Luke Beardsworth. The thinking behind it was - we’d like to commission more stories from the North, but having spent most of our journalistic careers in London, we wouldn’t know where to look for stories. The solution turned out to be hiring not a writer or a contributing editor, but an entire editorial team up North - and giving them a) half our commissioning budget and b) complete editorial freedom to use it as they see fit.
A year later, this is easily the best decision we’ve ever made. Ed and Luke have spun no fewer than 11 local newsletter editions of The Lead, tapping into outstanding local talent, and engendering truly spectacular subscriber growth and engagement (advertisers for local businesses, local governance and good causes only: trust me, you want to drop
a line.) Even more remarkably, together we’ve managed to produce no fewer than 275,000 copies of several print editions. And hand-picking our distribution spots and doorsteps allowed us to eschew the algorithms, getting to readers who would never have gotten to us otherwise.
The emails (and even hand-written letters) we get in return testify how welcome that approach was. And I would also argue that hyper-local newspapers, run by trusted local journalists, free from social media manipulation and with the mandate to run dogged campaigns on local issues have a vital role to play in salvaging British democracy from the populist far right. It’s that much harder to believe media and politicians only care about the London elites when politicians are compelled to pay attention to a paper edited and printed by someone you bump into weekly, at parents’ evening or at the pub.
We’re not the only ones working on reviving local media—the Manchester Mill franchise and the Bristol Cable are doing fantastic work—but we’ve invested much more than any new player in local print newspapers, and I’m confident the new team will invest even more in the years to come. In fact, I know they will, because the person taking over my overall responsibilities is very aptly, Ed himself; while the national edition will continue with the support of
and , when she is back from maternity leave.And so, friends, this is it. The Lead will be back under its new leadership after New Year’s, and I’ll be cheering them on. It’s been a pleasure. I learned a ridiculous amount, I got to work with brilliant young writers and with writers I long admired. I got to work with an amazing team: Mike and Padraig,
and , Ed and Luke, , Diyora Shadijanova and , and many, many more. My thanks go to each of them. But above all, I wanted to thank you, the readers. Your support and interest made these three years possible, rewarding and more than worth the while. I can’t wait to see what all of you—editors, writers, campaigners and readers—get up to next.Merry Christmas and Hanukkah to those celebrating; restful and safe holidays to all; and a happy New Year.
Dimi
PS I’ll be spending Monday packing up my metaphorical desk, so if you’re a paid subscriber, head on over to our group chat. I will open it to all paid subs, rather than just Founders, from 10am to 4pm, for an informal Ask Me Anything session; and I’ll be happy to pass questions to the rest of the team.
Be well,
D
And finally: in no particular order, some of the team’s favourite national stories of 2024.
The rise of authoritarian schools, by Cherry Casey
The dying fishing towns on England’s dying rivers, by Richard Booth
Why black women have lowest IVS success rates in the NHS, by Natalie Morris
How family courts became “trauma factories”, by Zoe Grunewald
Amazon keeps selling books linked to suicide, by Katie Hignett
The job crisis of Britain’s TV and film industry, by Diyora Shadijanova
The many different facets of the housing crisis, by Hannah Fearn
Got your own favourites? Let us know in the comments! And enjoy your break.