Assistant editor on The Times since 1988.OBSESSIONS A New Labour groupie in the early days, but that honeymoon has been over some time. Most of the time politics is an arduously long drawn-out business, complex and multi-layered."David Aaronovitch, AGE 51WHERE HE CAME FROM Educated at Oxford and Manchester. Was political editor at the New Statesman and chief political commentator at Independent on Sunday. Presents GMTV's Sunday Programme and Radio 4's A Week In Westminster and Parliamentary Questions.OBSESSIONS The Blair-Brown and Britain-EU relationships, the travails of the Tory party, the media and politics.HE SAYS "The Major government imploded because it was divided and exhausted, but the media did more than report the crisis We added to the sense of drama. To some extent the frenzied reporting of the genuinely dramatic Major years has become addictive. Now they're back in the real world, the one we all help to make.
And the awful truth is that there are enemies all over the place, not all of them as crudely murderous as terrorists, but many of them perilously dangerous all the same."Steve Richards, AGE 44WHERE HE CAME FROM Graduated from London College of Printing Became political correspondent at the BBC. It's hard to imagine a more bogus start to the election campaign than the immigrant-whipping of the past week."Deborah Orr, AGE 43WHERE SHE CAME FROM Started typesetting recruitment ads, moved to New Statesman, thenThe Guardian, editing weekend edition for five years. Joined The Independent in 1999.OBSESSIONS Unashamed socialist and Marxist. Education, social policy and identity politics.SHE SAYS "For a little while Bush and Blair got to live in their fantasy world, where those young radical Westerners who seek to show that their pious fiddling at the margins of catastrophe is wrong are painted-up, quite erroneously, as the enemy. Another 13 weeks of flying pigs, Fagin-flaunting and 'Forward, Not Back'? ... We are all going to hell in a handcart."Johann Hari, AGE 26WHERE HE CAME FROM JoinedNew Statesman fresh out of Cambridge and moved to The Independent in 2003. Contributing editor to gay magazine Attitude and columnist for the Evening Standard.OBSESSIONS Asylum seekers, drug legalisation, redistribution of wealth, democracy, prison reform, human rights.HE SAYS "Kill me now.
I can't face another three months of haggling between Tony Blair and Michael Howard over who will be tougher on immigrants and disability benefits. It doesn't come much headier than that."Richard Littlejohn, AGE 51WHERE HE CAME FROM Born in Essex Got his break on the Birmingham Evening Mail as teenager Spent almost 40 years in newspapers. Wrote his first column for the Evening Standard in the late 1980s, made his name on The Sun despite a stint at The Mail 10 years ago, where he is returning for a reported £1m.OBSESSIONS Anything "politically correct". This country's proud achievements, from fighting tyranny and spreading democracy around the globe to ending the slave trade, have been denied and distorted. The cesspit lapping around our ears is the result of years of deliberate public policy.