Jason Cowley

Early life and career

Cowley was brought up in the town of Harlow in Essex. He was educated at Latton Bush School, a former state comprehensive school in Harlow, followed by the University of Southampton, from which he graduated in 1989 with a first class degree in English and Philosophy.

In the early 1990s, Cowley began publishing reviews, literary essays and articles in British newspapers and magazines before, in 1996, becoming a staff writer on The Times, during which period he was a judge of the Booker Prize for fiction. In the summer of 1998, he became literary editor of the New Statesman; later he was a contributing editor of the magazine. Meanwhile, he continued to write on a range of subjects, including literature, sport and politics.

In 2003, Cowley joined the staff of The Observer working there as editor of The Observer Sport Monthly magazine and as a contributor. Under his editorship the magazine won numerous awards. He left The Observer to become editor of the literary magazine Granta.

Cowley's novel, Unknown Pleasures, was published by Faber & Faber in 2000 and a second book, a work of narrative non-fiction called The Last Game: Love, Death and Football, was published by Simon & Schuster in spring 2009.

Editor of the New Statesman

Cowley was appointed as the editor of the New Statesman magazine on 16 May 2008. and took up his new position in September 2008. Cowley's philosophy for the New Statesman was to explore ideas across the political spectrum, saying 'I want to use the pages of the magazine to explore political ideas on both left and right.' On 10 November 2009, he won the British Society of Magazine Editors' Editor of the Year award in the Special Interest and Current Affairs Magazines category. The judges said that Cowley had transformed the New Statesman and 'created issues of the magazine that were the envy of the industry'.

In 2010 and 2012, Cowley was shortlisted for the most coveted awards in the magazine industry, as Editor of the Year (consumer magazines) in the PPA Awards. In 2011, he was named editor of the year in the Newspaper & Current Affairs Magazines category at the British Society of Magazine Editors awards. In January 2013, Cowley was shortlisted for the European Press Prize editing award. The awards committee said: 'Cowley has succeeded in revitalising the New Statesman and re-establishing its position as an influential political and cultural weekly. He has given the New Statesman an edge and a relevance to current affairs it hasn't had for years.'

In August 2014, Cowley was one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence in the run-up to September's referendum on that issue. He has consistently been included in the London Evening Standard's list of the 1,000 Most Influential People in London. He was named among Britain's most influential 500 people by Debrett's 500 in association with the Sunday Times in 2015.

Under his editorship, the New Statesman's print circulation increased from 23,000 to 33,000 by 2015, traffic to the magazine's website reached a new record high in June 2016, with 27 million page views and four million unique users, and the magazine has become profitable..

Cowley has consciously commissioned new writers wanting the magazine "to be read by people who weren’t on the left as well as people interested in progressive politics and the Labour Party". Under Cowley, the magazine was hostile to Labour leaders Ed Miliband and Jeremy Corbyn. A few months before the 2017 election, Cowley wrote of the Labour opposition, describing Corbyn's party as "fatally divided" and commented that Conservative MPs "feel no pressure from" Labour and "that there is no opposition".

Two days before the 2017 general election, Cowley forecast that the Labour Party would suffer "a shattering defeat under Jeremy Corbyn". However shortly after polling stations closed, the exit poll predicted a hung parliament. At an NS party, Cowley was reported as having said: "Have we been too hard on Corbynism?"