David Lipsey (Lord Lipsey of Tooting Bec) was a British journalist, political adviser and Labour peer. He died on July 1st 2025.
Mr Lipsey served as adviser to Anthony Crosland, the Labour intellectual, in opposition and in government. Crosland died in 1977. Mr Lipsey called him "my chum, my mentor and my idol" and described himself as a "Croslandite egalitarian." After Crosland's death he worked for James Callaghan, the prime minister, until Labour's defeat at the polls in 1979.
Mr Lipsey worked as a journalist at the Sunday Times, the Times and The Economist. He co-founded the Sunday Correspondent, a newspaper that lasted only 14 months, folding in 1990. He joined The Economist in 1992 and wrote the Bagehot column on British politics. He left The Economist in 1999 to become a Labour peer. The Economist endorsed the Conservatives in the 1997 election, to Mr Lipsey's disappointment.
Mr Lipsey claimed to have borrowed the phrase "winter of discontent" to describe the strike-ridden months before Labour's fall in 1979, saying he "helped legitimise all Tory election campaigns ever since." He also claimed the phrase "New Labour" as his own, though he disliked what it came to stand for.
As a peer, Mr Lipsey sat on commissions on care for the elderly, electoral reform and funding the BBC. He oversaw greyhound racing and named his greyhound Tooting Becky after his daughter. He took up harness racing in his late 50s and won a couple of races.
Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.