Benjamin Charles Wegg-Prosser (born June 1974) is managing partner of Global Counsel, a London-based strategic consultancy and lobbying organisation which has as its chair

Peter Mandelson Peter Benjamin Mandelson, Baron Mandelson (born 21 October 1953) is a British Labour Party politician who served as First Secretary of State from 2009 to 2010. He was President of the Board of Trade in 1998 and from 2008 to 2010. He is the ...

. Wegg-Prosser was

Tony Blair Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of th ...

's Director of Strategic Communications at 10 Downing Street.

Early life

Wegg-Prosser's father is the solicitor Stephen Wegg-Prosser. His mother Victoria, née Bird, has been a producer for the BBC. His grandfather

Charles Wegg-Prosser Charles Wegg-Prosser (16 August 1910 – 7 October 1996) was a British politician and solicitor. Wegg-Prosser attended Downside School, then studied at Oriel College, Oxford and became a solicitor. In 1934, he joined the British Union of Fa ...

was a parliamentary candidate for the British Union of Fascists before repudiating the party and joining Labour. After service in the British Army in World War II, his grandfather served as a councillor on the

Metropolitan Borough of Paddington Paddington was a civil parish and metropolitan borough in London, England. It was an ancient parish in the county of Middlesex, governed by an administrative vestry. The parish was included in the area of responsibility of the Metropolitan Board ...

for many years in the 1940s and 1950s, and then an

alderman An alderman is a member of a municipal assembly or council in many jurisdictions founded upon English law. The term may be titular, denoting a high-ranking member of a borough or county council, a council member chosen by the elected members t ...

Career

Wegg-Prosser worked for

before leaving in December 1998 and working briefly for media group Pearson PLC, before joining ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' in 2000. His father acted for Mandelson in the purchase of a home which was investigated by the

Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards is an officer of the British House of Commons. The work of the officer is overseen by the Commons Select Committee on Standards. The current commissioner is Kathryn Stone. Duties The commissioner i ...

in 1999. At ''The Guardian'' he held positions as publisher of ''The Guardian''’s politics website, general manager of the education website, and finally publisher of ''Society Guardian''. As publisher of the latter he launched a series of brand extensions including conferences, books, magazines and new sections in the newspaper. From 2005 to 2007 Wegg-Prosser was

's Director of Strategic Communications at 10 Downing Street, where he oversaw a series of innovations including the launch of Downing Street's e-petitions service. He also implemented the first

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

channel for any head of government, which Blair launched in April 2007. In 2007 he joined SUP Media, a Moscow-based digital media company, where he was Director of Corporate Development. SUP Media is a Moscow-based online media company which owns LiveJournal.com, Championat.ru, Gazeta.ru, +SOl and Victory SA. In 2008 he additionally became a consultant for recently created public relations company The Ledbury Group, focusing on new media and political relations. As of 2013, Wegg-Prosser is managing partner of Global Counsel, a London-based strategic consultancy which is chaired by Peter Mandelson. In April that year, Wegg-Prosser became a director of the Labour Party supporting blog

LabourList LabourList is a British news website supportive of, but independent of, the Labour Party, launched in 2009. Describing itself as Labour's "biggest independent grassroots e-network", the site's content includes news, commentary, interviews, campa ...

. In September 2013, Wegg-Prosser released internal 10 Downing Street emails about the internal fight in September 2006 to prevent Tony Blair being replaced as Prime Minister by

Gordon Brown James Gordon Brown (born 20 February 1951) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Labour Party from 2007 to 2010. He previously served as Chancellor of the Exchequer in Tony B ...

, which eventually happened in June 2007. Wegg-Prosser is a funder of

Labour Tomorrow Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

, a campaigning group with several senior Labour Party figures on its board, which opposes the leadership of

Jeremy Corbyn Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (; born 26 May 1949) is a British politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. On the political left of the Labour Party, Corbyn describes himself as a socialist ...

References

External links

YouTube Labour:vision channel
1974 births Living people British publishers (people) British public relations people {{UK-bio-stub