After a year away from blogging, I have decided I can’t live without it.While editing PinkNews.co.uk, Europe’s largest gay news service, continues to be an exciting way to pass the working day, I find I do not get enough time to comment – and as you know I do love to comment.
In honour of the re-commencement of my blog, I have reproduced some of the best of the interviews and comment pieces I have written for PinkNews.co.uk in the past twelve months.
2007 was a great year for me – the first time I got to interview Cabinet ministers, my first visit to 10 Downing St, my first (and so far only) experience of seeing Tony Blair speak in the flesh.
I was particularly lucky to be able to interview both candidates for Lib Dem leader, all six of the contenders for Deputy Leader of the Labour party and receive a nomination for the Stonewall Journalist of the Year award.
Some person from The Independent won it.
A personal highlight was the party conference season – my first as a political journalist.
I guess I was not prepared for how much fun they are, and how much alcohol is consumed.
I can’t wait for 2008.
Yet there is so much to think about before then.
A London mayoral election that is already too close to call.
A Presidential election in America that could bring real change or more of the same.
A critical year for the Prime Minister.
Can he turn around his image and his party, pick up some council seats in the May elections and push forward into 2009 ready to win an historic fourth Labour term?
And what of Nick Clegg? Always a favourite of mine from the day he gave me one of my first high-profile interviews, he is yet to make a significant dent in the public consciousness.
Will the new confident Tory party squeeze the Lib Dems firmly onto the sidelines? Or will Cameron also falter, his new sheen dulled by the daily rough and tumble of Parliamentary politics?
And when IS Michael Martin going to stand down as Speaker?
Who knows – one thing is for certain though – with a new occupant of the White House to be chosen, and in the most wide-open race in decades, 2008 is going to be a political year to remember.
