Stephen Parkinson, Baron Parkinson of Whitley Bay

During his time at Quiller, Parkinson also played a key role in the victorious NOtoAV campaign in the 2011 United Kingdom Alternative Vote referendum, serving as the Conservative Party's National Organiser in the cross-party campaign.[11]

In 2012 he became Special Adviser to Theresa May when she was Home Secretary. Parkinson continued in this role until the autumn of 2015.[12]

In October 2015, Parkinson left his role as Special Adviser at the Home Office to become National Organiser of the ground operation for the successful Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum.[13][14]

In the aftermath of the June 2016 EU referendum campaign, Theresa May became Prime Minister the following month, whereupon Parkinson rejoined her as a Special Adviser based in Downing Street, with the job title of Political Secretary to the Prime Minister.[15]

At the 2010 general election, Parkinson stood as the Conservative candidate for Newcastle upon Tyne North, having been selected the previous year.[16] He came third, polling 7,966 votes (18.1%), although he managed to increase the Conservative vote by a third.

Parkinson had declared his interest in standing for a winnable constituency at the 2015 general election, and had been tipped for the shortlist in safe seats such as Richmond, Yorkshire; but in December 2014, he and another of May's Special Advisers, Nick Timothy, became involved in a candidate selection row. Both were removed from the Conservative Party's list of approved candidates by Party Chairman Grant Shapps, reportedly on the instructions of David Cameron's growing alarm at having such key allies of a leadership rival such as Theresa May in the House of Commons, and Parkinson and Timothy were given the pretext that neither had campaigned in the Rochester and Strood by-election (with such campaigning being a requirement of candidates staying on the approved list). Both Parkinson and Timothy protested that as Special Advisers, they were bound by the Civil Service Code of Conduct which specifically forbids senior civil servants from engaging in political campaigning. The Conservative Party subsequently apologised to both Parkinson and Timothy, but by that time, it was too late for either to apply for a seat.[17][18][19]

On 28 April 2017, with Prime Minister Theresa May having called a snap general election ten days earlier, it was reported that Parkinson had been shortlisted for the "safe seat" of Saffron Walden, after the retirement of veteran MP Sir Alan Haselhurst was announced.[20]

Analysing the shortlist, former MP and ConservativeHome Executive Editor Paul Goodman noted that, "Nor to date have SpAds been shoehorned into constituencies against weak opposition", but that, "The case of Saffron Walden is perhaps more suggestive. Stephen Parkinson, the Prime Minister’s Political Secretary and the former head of the ground campaign at Vote Leave, is up against Katherine Bennett, who hasn’t fought a Parliamentary election previously, and Kemi Badenoch, a member of the London Assembly who was beaten in the first round in [the Conservative selection contest for] Hampstead and Kilburn."[21] It was subsequently reported in the Daily Telegraph that Saffron Walden was one of four seats where Conservative activists had complained of a "selection stitch-up" over a Special Adviser being shortlisted alongside little-known rivals on the shortlist (with other instances being Alex Burghart, May’s Social Justice Policy Adviser shortlisted in Brentwood and Ongar; Chris Brannigan, Director of Government Relations at No. 10 Downing Street shortlisted in Aldershot; and Neil O'Brien, May's Economy and Industrial Strategy Adviser who was reportedly putting his name forward for safe seats). The Telegraph cited these instances of how, "The party’s leadership has been accused of using a rule change because of the snap election to 'foist its own friends onto local parties'."[22] Total Politics similarly asserted that "Theresa May now risks charges of election cronyism" after the shortlisting of so many Special Advisers, including Parkinson and Burghart, alongside James Wild (Special Adviser to Defence Secretary Michael Fallon) selected in Norfolk North, Meg Powell-Chandler (former Special Adviser to Communities Secretary Greg Clark) selected in Birmingham Northfield, and Parkinson's university contemporary Will Gallagher (former Special Adviser to Justice Secretary Chris Grayling) selected in City of Chester.[23]

In the event, after a last-minute change in the final line-up on the shortlist of three, with Katherine Bennett being replaced by Laura Farris, the Saffron Walden Conservative Association selected Kemi Badenoch for the seat rather than Farris or Parkinson, with Badenoch winning on the first ballot.[24][25]

Parkinson did not present himself for election to the House of Commons at the following election in 2019, having been elevated to the House of Lords just prior to the dissolution of Parliament.

• Arena of Ambition: A History of the Cambridge Union (Icon Books, London, 2009).

• "Ten Ways to Help NO2AV in the Next Hundred Days", ConservativeHome, 25 January 2011.
• "No Alternative: the unhappy history of the Alternative Vote", Conservative History Journal, Vol. I, Issue 10 (2011).
• "Tory Olympians: Conservative Parliamentarians and the modern Olympic Games", Conservative History Journal, Vol. II, Issue 1 (2012).
• "The St. Stephen’s Club, 1870-2012", Conservative History Journal, Vol. II, Issue 1 (2012).
• "Sir Geoffrey Butler and the Tory Tradition", Conservative History Journal, Vol. II, Issue 3 (2014).
• "Mavis Tate and the Horrors of Buchenwald", Conservative History Journal, Vol. II, Issue 4 (2015).
• "A flawed first draft of history: Theresa May’s former political secretary on the biography that doesn’t get her right - Anthony Seldon, May at 10", The Critic, December 2019.