Why I started Forge
I am not a politician. I have never run for office. I have spent my working life in laboratories and on computers, running genomics pipelines, leading research teams, working with farmers and clinicians and engineers on problems that have right and wrong answers.
I started Forge because I got tired of watching the country get worse while the people in charge of fixing it kept arguing about who to blame.
The tax code is seventeen thousand pages long. Welfare has thirty separate benefits and loses nine and a half billion pounds a year to fraud. Water companies dumped raw sewage into our rivers four hundred and fifty thousand times in a single year, and paid shareholders billions while doing it. Eight hundred unelected Lords sit in Parliament. Forty-one thousand people crossed the Channel last year. Every single one detected. None turned back.
None of this is complicated to fix. It just requires someone willing to say what's obvious and do what's necessary.
I am a scientist, not a politician. I have written a 300-page manifesto. I think parts of it are wrong. I want you to tell me which.
What I do
I trained as a secondary school teacher before moving into science. The classroom is one of the most rewarding jobs I have ever done. It is also one of the most pressured. The expectations placed on teachers, the bureaucracy, the constant accountability for things outside their control. I left to do something different, but the experience shapes how I think about education policy, and about the everyday institutions that working people rely on.
For fourteen years since then, I have worked at the interface between biology and computing. My background is in genomics, the technology that reads DNA at scale. I have led teams responsible for everything from pest control science at Rothamsted Research, to clinical oncology pipelines, to running long-read sequencing at scale.
What that work taught me is that complex systems can be understood, measured, and improved. But only if you start with honesty about what is broken, and willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads.
The same applies to government. Most of what is wrong with Britain is not a mystery. The fixes are mostly known. They have been tried in other countries. They work.
A working career, briefly
What I stand for
The full case is in the manifesto. The short version is three principles, and ten things they translate to.
Modern
A tax code under 1,000 pages. AI triage in every GP surgery. Estonian-style digital government. Twenty-first-century systems for a twenty-first-century country.
Fair
Same income, same outcome. No loopholes. No stamp duty on your home. Multinationals pay tax where they sell. Foreign donations to politicians banned outright.
Accountable
Directors who break the law go to prison. Politicians can't take gifts. Water nationalised because they couldn't be trusted. Every pound of public money tracked.
Ten things that follow from those three words
- One tax rate. One property tax. Three benefits, not thirty.
- Water nationalised. Bills frozen. Twenty-five-year cleanup plan for every river.
- Defence at 3% of GDP, funded by Defence Bonds anyone can buy from £100.
- Channel Patrol Fleet. Embassy-only asylum. Bilateral return agreement with France.
- NHS AI triage in every GP surgery. Hospital at Home tripled. Step-down centres adjacent to every major hospital.
- Politicians who can't take gifts, can't take foreign donations, and can't take crypto.
- Citizens' Scrutiny Council replacing the unelected Lords.
- Mandatory voting with automatic registration at 18.
- Two-year accelerated degrees as the default. Apprenticeships funded equal to degrees.
- Renters' rights extended beyond the 2026 Act. Energy decoupled from gas.
What I am not
I am not part of any existing party. I have never been a member of one. I have no political tribe to defend. I do not believe Britain needs to be made angrier. It needs to be made better.
I am not a populist. Populism tells you the answers are simple and the only obstacle is bad people. The truth is the answers are mostly known, the obstacles are mostly institutional, and most of the people in the system are doing their best inside a structure that does not work.
I am not a single-issue candidate. The country has multiple problems. They are all solvable. They all need attention at once.
I am not your friend. I do not want to be your friend. I want to be a competent representative who does the job properly.
What I am asking
Read the manifesto. If you disagree with parts of it, say so. Publicly, on the discussion hub, or by joining a Forge Club. If sixty percent of Forge Club members back a change to a policy, the policy gets rewritten. That is real influence, not a focus group, not consultation theatre.
If you are interested in standing as a candidate, the requirements are clear: minimum five years working outside professional politics; no second jobs, consultancies, or corporate board positions; sign the Clean Politics Pledge; secure backing from your local Forge Club. £150,000 salary. No outside earnings. Public commitment to vote against any law you have not personally read.
If you cannot stand, support what we are building. Donate up to £500 a year. That is the cap, by design. Volunteer your skills. Knock doors. Start a Forge Club where you live.
Above all: tell the people you know. Movements move fast when the moment is right. Macron founded En Marche in April 2016 and won the French presidency thirteen months later. The moment is right.