James Frayne

James Frayne is a Founding Partner at Public First. James has spent his entire career working in communications and opinion research and leads on Public First’s campaign and qualitative research work. For agencies in London and New York City, he has worked for many of the world’s leading brands and in 2013 wrote a guide to corporate communications: Meet the People, published by Harriman House. James has specialised in researching and communicating with working class and lower middle class audiences, writing a regular column “Far from Notting Hill” on the Conservative Home website and authoring the report which coined the “Just About Managing” term. He was Director of Communications for the Department for Education between 2011 and 2012, having begun his career in politics – for example, working on the successful North East Says No campaign against a Regional Assembly, where he was Campaign Director. James is a Certified Member of the Market Research Society and managed the research for The Times’ Election in One Room project in the 2019 election.