Who we are
Between 2008, when Tatton Spiller was working at Parliament in their Education Service, and 2013, when he was working in a Secondary school in Thanet, he because increasingly frustrated that there was nothing out there to explain what was going on in UK Politics. New laws were coming out all the time, but the papers just weren’t breaking it down.
In 2014, Tatton went part time as a teacher in order to set up Simple Politics to change the landscape. To help people have better conversations about politics. He was also in the midsts of an undiagnosed bipolar disorder breakdown, but that is a story for another website.
Since we launched in 2015, SP has grown from Tatton working away on his own in a shed in his home town of Whitstable to Tatton working away in a (different) shed in a (different part) of Whitstable. He is no longer alone; all the best things SP does are now created by the incredible Diane Daniels and the rest of Team SP.
What we do
We want to help people have better conversations. We do that in so many ways these days. Here’s what’s going on.
Simple Politics – where it all began.
Tatton sends an email every Friday from the Simple Politics Substack. It’s a little look back at the week just gone and a preview of the week to come. You can sign up at the bottom of the page.
Diane and Tatton also host the Simple Politics podcast. We don’t like to show off, but it’s won multiple awards and you should probably give it a listen.
In the shop, we sell Tatton’s two books, The Breakdown and Politics But Better, and our card games, Policy Odyssey and Policy Odyssey 2, the journey continues.
Both Tatton and Diane pop up on the TV and radio now and again. We’re also often found at events and all manner of things. Honestly, it’s exhausting!
Simple Money
In April 2025, we launched Simple Money. It felt like every post we did had a knock on effect with finances and costs. As such, we chose to launch Simple Money to help people have better conversations about money. We wanted to bring our simplicity and our humanity to the world of personal finance.
Simple Animals
There is only so much that we could handle. The negativity, the doom and the difficulty of politics and money. We want to do something just a little bit more positive. We wanted to give our community something joyful and fun. As such, Simple Animals launched in 2026.
How we’re funded
Funding has always been an uphill battle. Our model of political engagement doesn’t work behind a paywall. We couldn’t help people from that position. That means our core offer has always been – and always will be – free to access.
In the financial year 2025/26, we were funded about 60% by donations – regular contributions on Donorbox, one off ‘Buy Me A Coffee‘s, and through our Patreon programme,
Another 15% or so came from sales in our shop. The Policy Odyssey card game has been hugely popular since Tatton invented it in 2016. His books also continue to sell well.
We occasionally manage to pick up grants and support from organisations. They were about 20% of our income that year.
We also run partnerships with organisations that we love. Those partnerships accounted for approximately 10% of our income. If you’d like to get involved with that, please email Emma (on )!
Both Facebook and YouTube pay us a tiny bit for our content. We have managed to have the largest following for everything we do on Instagram – one of very few platforms who don’t pay creators for their content. It’s quite annoying.
After that, there is our work with schools. Right now, that’s quite limited, but we’ve got big plans. More on that soon!