Tom Watson (Labour politician)

Watson was born in Sheffield, West Riding of Yorkshire, and educated at King Charles I School, Kidderminster. He studied at the University of Hull, where he was active in the Hull University Labour Club and elected President of the Students' Union in 1992. He was Chair of the National Organisation of Labour Students from 1992 to 1993. He then worked as a marketing officer and advertising account executive. In 1993, he began to work for the Labour Party as National Development Officer for Youth and then worked on the party's 1997 general election campaign. He then left to become the National Political Officer of the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union.[1]

Watson was elected MP for West Bromwich East at the 2001 general election. He served on the Home Affairs Select Committee from 2001 to 2003, and supported the committee's recommendation on UK drug policy to "initiate a discussion within the Commission on Narcotic Drugs of alternative ways – including the possibility of legalisation and regulation – to tackle the global drugs dilemma".[2] In his first year in parliament, he launched a campaign to ban album sales of convicted sex offender Gary Glitter.[3]

In 2002, Watson moved a Ten Minute Rule Bill to change organ donation laws.[4] Later that year, he was a leading candidate for the chairmanship of the Labour Friends of Israel alongside Stephen Byers.[5]

In 2003, Watson voted in favour of going to war with Iraq,[6][7] and subsequently voted consistently against an investigation into the war.[8]

In 2004 he won the New Statesman New Media Award in the category of elected representative for being one of the first MPs to use his blog to further the democratic process.[9]

Watson was campaign chair for Labour in the Birmingham Hodge Hill by-election in July 2004. The campaign drew criticism for its dirty tactics, particularly a Labour leaflet proclaiming "Labour is on your side – the Lib Dems are on the side of failed asylum seekers", for which Watson later admitted responsibility and expressed regrets.[1][10]

Watson was appointed as an Assistant Government Whip in September 2004.[11]

He was promoted in May 2006 to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence. Watson was instrumental in ensuring that soldiers shot for cowardice in the First World War received posthumous pardons.[12]

On 5 September 2006, it was reported that Watson had signed a letter to Tony Blair urging the Prime Minister's resignation to end the uncertainty over his succession.[13]

The Government Chief Whip, Jacqui Smith, told Watson that evening that he must either withdraw his signature to the letter, or resign his post. On 6 September 2006, he resigned his ministerial position and released a further statement calling on Blair to resign.[14] Tony Blair was quoted by the BBC as saying that the statement and letter from Watson was "disloyal, discourteous and wrong" and that he would be seeing Watson later in the day.[15]

Watson in 2009

Watson returned as a government whip in July 2007, after Gordon Brown became prime minister.[16]

Watson took a particular interest in digital affairs, and in making non-personal government data more available to the public. As a Cabinet Office minister from January 2008 to June 2009 he promoted innovative data use and open source software.[17][18] Watson served on the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee from July 2009 to September 2012.[19]

Watson led a number of MPs in speaking out firmly against the Digital Economy Act 2010, as the bill was being passed through Parliament in April 2010. He took part in a protest against the bill outside parliament on 24 March 2010.[20]

In October 2011 Watson was promoted to become Deputy Chair of the Labour Party, to work with Jon Trickett and Michael Dugher in the Shadow Cabinet Office, running Labour's elections and campaigns.[22] He resigned from this position in July 2013, in light of the 2013 Labour Party Falkirk candidate selection row.[23]

In 2013, Watson joined a cross-party campaign in support of a referendum on Britain's membership of the European Union. He supported an amendment by the Conservative MP Adam Afriyie which called for a referendum to be held before the 2015 general election.[24][25]

Watson and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at the 2016 Labour Party Conference

On 8 May 2015, the day after the Labour Party lost the general election, Watson announced his intention to stand in the ensuing deputy leadership election, becoming the first to declare.[50] Watson was nominated by 59 Members of Parliament, more than any other candidate, and quickly emerged as the front runner.[51] On 12 September he was elected as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party with 198,962 votes or 50.7% in the third round, including second preference votes from those who voted for other candidates.[52][53][54] He was also appointed Chairman of the Labour Party and Shadow Minister for the Cabinet Office by new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.[19] In 2019 after he stood down both as an MP and as Deputy Leader he said he had voted for Owen Smith in the 2016 Leadership election.[55]

Watson is Vice Chair of Trade Union Friends of Israel (TUFI).[56]

In December 2015, Watson spoke about Labour members who took part in a vigil against proposed UK airstrikes on Syria outside the office of Stella Creasy MP, saying that "if there were Labour party members on that [anti-war] demonstration, intimidating staff members of an MP like that, then I think they should be removed from the party." His spokesman later said that Watson was unaware that the office was empty at the time.[57]

In October 2016, Watson abstained, along with 100 other Labour MPs who abstained on or voted against the Labour Party's unsuccessful motion to withdraw UK support from the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen. The Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen had led to thousands of civilian casualties.[58][59]

Watson announced in October 2017 that he had gone on hunger strike, in support of two Guantánamo Bay detainees also on hunger strike, after the US government changed its policy on prisoners who refuse food; they will not be fed at all, instead of being force fed.[60]

In the October 2016 shadow cabinet reshuffle, Watson was made Shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. In that role, he called for greater scrutiny of a planned takeover of Sky UK by Murdoch-owned Fox,[61] backed the TV licence fee,[62] criticised government pressure on Ofcom in relation to regulation of the BBC,[63] and proposed fairer rail ticketing for football fans.[64] In 2017, he announced the Labour Party would launch a review of the NHS treatment of gambling addiction. The review was published in 2018 which proposed a blanket ban in the use of credit cards for betting. Watson said making gambling payments with credit cards "significantly increases the risk gamblers will gamble more than they can afford."[65]

In June 2017, Ian Lavery replaced Watson as Labour Party Chair.[66]

In March 2018, Watson backed calls for a statue to be erected in memory of women's rights campaigner Mary Wollstonecraft.[67]

In September 2018, Watson vowed that if Labour won the next general election he would set up an independent, cross-party commission to investigate ways of preventing type-2 diabetes, with the aim of eliminating the estimated rise in cases within five years.[68]

Following defections of Labour MPs in 2019 to The Independent Group, later Change UK, Watson set up the Future Britain Group of Labour politicians.[69] He was criticised for continuing to accept funding from property developer David Garrard, who was reported to have given Change UK £1.5 million and to have financially supported Joan Ryan and Ian Austin since their departure from Labour.[70] Watson has also received funding from businessman Trevor Chinn.[71]

In July 2019, Watson was criticised by Labour's General Secretary Jennie Formby for being irresponsible in criticising Labour's handling of antisemitism claims. Formby said he risked exacerbating fears in the Jewish community and that, while antisemitism was a real problem, steps had been taken to tackle it. Watson had asked for a copy of the party response to a request by the Equality and Human Rights Commission to be released to the Shadow Cabinet and the NEC, which Formby said she had already offered sight of to Watson (she did not address the subject of releasing it to the rest of the Shadow Cabinet and NEC), and had previously asked to be copied in on individual complaints, which had data protection issues. In response to Watson's claim that the party's response to the Panorama programme Is Labour Anti-Semitic had "smeared" the former Labour staff members and "breached all common standards of decency", Formby stated that all current Labour staff members had access to an "Employee Assistance Programme" but said the party was not made aware of the distress suffered by staff members at the time and she was "very concerned" to hear about it for the first time in the Panorama documentary. Watson was also criticised for attacking Formby when she was undergoing chemotherapy treatment for cancer.[72][73]

The same month, former Labour and Respect MP George Galloway and former Conservative MP Harvey Proctor announced individually that they planned to stand against Watson at the next general election, Galloway as a pro-Brexit pro-Corbyn independent, and Proctor in protest at Watson's role in the false paedophilia allegations of Operation Midland.[74][75] July also saw Watson be the subject of a complaint to the Labour Party for making allegedly antisemitic remarks; he had in his Easter message asked readers to recall the arrest of Christ by "a squad of Roman soldiers under the direction of a servant to the High Priest." The complainant, Geoffrey Alderman, said that the fact this was not antisemitic under the IHRA definition adopted by the Labour Party highlighted the definition's "flaws".[76] This was also the month in which cartoonist Steve Bell protested to The Guardian after it refused to run an installment of his long running 'If...' cartoon strip, which portrayed Watson as an "antisemite finder general".[77]

In September 2019, Watson made a speech urging Labour to become a pro-remain party, in order to win back disaffected remain voters.[78] He has been quoted by The Guardian as saying that "most of those who've deserted us over our Brexit policy did so with deep regret and would greatly prefer to come back; they just want us to take an unequivocal position that, whatever happens, we'll fight to remain, and to sound like we mean it."[79] Jeremy Corbyn rejected his proposition, saying that Labour would continue to represent both sides of the Brexit divide.[80]

In January 2020, it was reported that Watson had been nominated for a peerage. According to John Rentoul, who wrote in The Independent, his nomination was subsequently rejected by the House of Lords Appointments Commission, the body who vet nominees for "propriety". Watson is believed to have been rejected due to his actions surrounding Operation Midland.[85][86][87][88]

In March 2020, Watson was appointed chair of UK Music.[89]

In August 2020, it was reported by The Daily Telegraph that Watson was to once again be nominated for a peerage, in this instance by the Labour leader Keir Starmer.[90]

In September 2020, Watson, who had previously been heavily critical of the gambling industry, took a job as an adviser to Paddy Power and Betfair on the issue of problem gambling.[91]

Watson was married to Siobhan[92] and they had two children before separating in 2012.[93][94]

In September 2018, during an interview with BBC Radio 4's The Today Programme, Watson revealed that he had been diagnosed with type-2 diabetes but had "reversed" the condition through diet and exercise. Watson explained that between the summer of 2017 and September 2018, he had lost seven stone (98 lb; 44 kg). Watson also revealed that he had "battled weight since my early 20s".[68]

Tom Watson is a gamer and a regular reviewer of games for New Statesman[95] and other titles. He finds it relaxing and confessed to spending too much time on Portal 2 while preparing for questions during the hacking story interviews.[96] He is also a fan of alternative rock music, especially the band Drenge, whom he recommended to the Labour leader Ed Miliband in his letter of resignation when stepping down from the post of party general election co-ordinator.[97] He additionally likes the music of Courtney Jaye,[97] Danny Coughlan, Billy Bragg, Elvis Costello, Primal Scream and Public Enemy.[98]

• 2012 – Dial M for Murdoch (Allen Lane) ISBN 1-84614-603-8
• 2020 – Downsizing (Kyle Books) ISBN 9780857838759
• 2020 – The House [with Imogen Robertson] (Little, Brown) ISBN 9780751578799

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Tom Watson (Labour politician)

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Tom Watson.

• Official blog
• Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard
• Contributions in Parliament at Hansard 1803–2005
• Voting record at Public Whip
• Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou
• Tom Watson MP on the Open Rights Group wiki
• Full text of resignation letter, BBC News Online, 6 September 2006
• The Sun pays damages to Labour MP Tom Watson, James Robinson, The Guardian, 28 September 2009
• Urgent question on BSkyB, Parliament.uk, 1 July 2011
• Walker, Jonathon (8 July 2011). "The Tom Watson Story: The man who took on Rupert Murdoch and won". Birmingham Post. Retrieved 8 July 2011.
• Role of Minister for Digital Engagement and Civil Service Issues, 3 April 2009