Mark Seddon

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Mark Seddon (born 1962) is a British journalist. He is currently the New York-based United Nations correspondent for Al Jazeera English. Earlier in his career he was based in the UK, and was a Labour Party activist.

He has reported for the BBC from inside Iraq, North Korea and China, as well as for Sky TV from Yemen and for Al Jazeera English from North Korea, Syria, Dr Congo, Kenya, Ethiopia and Haiti. He has been a Diarist for the London Evening Standard and has been a frequent contributor to The Guardian, The Independent, The Times, New Statesman and Private Eye. 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.

The son of a British army officer, Seddon was sent to Dauntsey's School, an independent co-educational boarding school in Wiltshire. He studied International Relations at the University of East Anglia, where in 1984 he was elected president of the Union of UEA Students. Seddon worked as a political lobbyist and became editor of Tribune in 1993, a job he kept until 2004. He was elected to the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party as a Grassroots Alliance candidate in 1997, gaining the highest share of the vote and remained an NEC member until 2005.

Seddon tried to find a parliamentary seat and stood in the safe Conservative seat of Buckingham in the 2001 General Election against John Bercow. In 2002, he was controversially removed from the shortlist to be Labour's candidate in the Ogmore by-election. During the 1992 General Election, he worked for Gordon Brown and served for five years on the Chancellor of the Exchequer's Economic Policy Commission.

Seddon has been a vocal critic of the Labour government, particularly over the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. He backed Mayor of London Ken Livingstone's ultimately successful attempts to be readmitted to the Labour Party. He contributes to several newspapers, particularly The Guardian. He is writing a book, Dear Leader, a dissenter’s tale from within New Labour. After leaving the NEC in 2005, he became the United Nations and New York correspondent for Al Jazeera English.