Matthew Taylor (Labour politician)
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Matthew Taylor (born 1960) is Chief Executive of the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA).
Taylor is the only son of the sociologist and broadcaster Professor Laurie Taylor, and speaks highly of his stepmother (his father's second wife Anna Coote, the New Statesman and Channel 4 Dispatches journalist). He was educated at Emanuel School and the University of Southampton.
Taylor became a Warwickshire county councillor and fought Warwick and Leamington in the 1992 general election, pulling Labour up into second place, before joining the Labour Party's staff in 1994. He became the Party's Campaign Co-ordinator, then Director of Policy during the 1997 general election victory. He played an important role in drawing up the manifesto and the Party's high-profile 'pledge-card' and developing the Excalibur rapid rebuttal database that was used to campaign against the Conservative Party. Taylor became Assistant General Secretary of the Labour Party under Margaret McDonagh but clashed with her and left in December 1998.
He moved on to be Director of the left wing think tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research. Some IPPR trustees were uncomfortable about appointing someone so closely associated with the Labour government, but he reformed the Institute's profile and output. Taylor became a familiar face on current affairs programmes such as Newsnight.
Following this he was appointed by Prime Minister Tony Blair to head the Number 10 Downing Street Policy Unit, being charged with drawing up the Labour Party's manifesto for the May 2005 general election. Following the re-election of the Labour government he was given the post of Chief Adviser on Strategy to the Prime Minister. He was associated with several initiatives to engage the public with the political process and played a key role in developing the Labour Party's "Big Conversation" discussion forums. He left in 2006 to take up his current role at the RSA.
