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Alison Phillips is a journalist, editor, and broadcaster.

She regularly appears on television and radio, discussing current social and political issues with appearances on shows including This Morning, Question Time and Newsnight. She also frequently contributes to current affairs podcasts.

Alison writes a weekly media column for The New Statesman, a weekly column for The i newspaper and is a regular contributor to The Observer. She served as Editor-in-Chief of the Mirror – during which time she was responsible for the Daily, Sunday and digital editions – between 2018 and 2024. She was previously editor of the Sunday Mirror.

Alison was named Feature Writer of the Year in the 2024 Press Awards and Columnist of the Year in the 2018 Press Awards.

During her time as editor the Mirror was Daily Newspaper of the Year, 2022 and News Media Organisation, 2022. She was responsible for leading the Mirror through Covid and as it broke the string of exclusive stories around Partygate and Dominic Cummings’ infamous trip to Barnard Castle. She also led successful campaigns including action on dangerous dogs, changing the law on organ donation and saving rail ticket offices.

Alison is a trustee of the National Trust and board member of the Society Editors and Journalists’ Charity. She is also a committee member of Women in Journalism. She has previously served as Vice President of the Society of Editors and Chair of Women in Journalism, 2020-2023. She is currently senior communications adviser for MHP Group.

Alison started her career as a reporter at the Harlow Star, Essex, before attending Leeds University where she became editor of Leeds Student. She went on to work at the Evening Argus in Brighton, Connors Press Agency, Woman magazine and the Sunday People, before joining the Mirror in 2001 as Features Editor.

Helen Margetts is Professor of Society and the Internet and Professorial Fellow at Mansfield College. She is a political scientist specialising in the relationship between digital technology and government, politics and public policy. She is an advocate for the potential of multi-disciplinarity and computational social science for our understanding of political behaviour and development of public policy in a digital world.  She has published over a hundred books, articles and policy reports in this area, including Political Turbulence: How Social Media Shape Collective Action (with Peter John, Scott Hale and Taha Yasseri, 2015); Paradoxes of Modernization (with Perri 6 and Christopher Hood, 2010); Digital Era Governance (with Patrick Dunleavy, 2006, 2008); and The Tools of Government in the Digital Age (with Christopher Hood, 2007).

Since 2018, Helen has been Director of the Public Policy Programme at The Alan Turing Insitute, the UK’s national institute for data science and artificial intelligence. The programme works with policy-makers to research and develop ways of using data science and AI to improve policy-making and service provision, foster government innovation and establish an ethical framework for the use of data science in government.

Tim Montgomerie is an economist by background but since leaving the Bank of England he devoted most of his career to centre right politics – first as a Tory party insider but in more recent years primarily as a journalist. As well as founder of ConservativeHome.com, the Centre for Social Justice and UnHerd he was a regular columnist for The Times Comment pages – which he also briefly edited. Today he contributes to multiple broadcast platforms and takes part in a weekly cross-party podcast with Miranda Green, Iain Martin and Steve Richards. At the end of the last year he ended his thirty plus years of Tory membership and joined Reform.