Biography

Paul Mason is an award-winning writer, journalist and political consultant. A life-long member of the Labour Party, he describes his politics as “radical social democracy”. Born in Leigh, Greater Manchester in 1960, he studied Music and Political Theory & Institutions at Sheffield University. He lectured at Loughborough University in the 1980s and entered business journalism in the 1990s, becoming deputy editor of Computer Weekly. He was economics editor at BBC Newsnight and Channel 4 News before going freelance in 2016 in order to campaign publicly against Brexit.

He is the author of eight books, including the bestseller Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future and the novel Rare Earth, a satire on Western attitudes to China. He is the author of three stage plays: Party Animals (with James Quinn, JB Shorts 2016), The Divine Chaos of Starry Things (White Bear, 2017) and Why It’s Kicking Off Everywhere (2017), a collaboration between the Young Vic and BBC TWO.

As a journalist he covered the Enron bankruptcy, the 2008 financial crisis, ethnic conflict in Kenya, the 2014 war in Gaza and the 2015 Greek crisis.

He is the Aneurin Bevan adjunct fellow in Defence and Resilience at the think tank Council on Geostrategy and visiting senior fellow at the University of Exeter’s Centre for the Public Understanding of Defence and Security.
In the run-up to the 2024 general election he co-authored Labour’s defence industrial strategy and continues to campaign and consult on the politics of defence technology, skills and national resilience. He holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Sheffield.

His latest book Reds: A Global History of Communism is published by Head Of Zeus in August 2026 and by Scribner in October 2026. He lives in London.