Gourt Home::Gourt :: Tom Watson (politician)
Thomas Anthony Watson (born 8 January 1967) is a politician in the United Kingdom. He is Labour Party Member of Parliament (MP) for West Bromwich East, and is principally known for being the first MP to start a blog. In May 2006, he was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence.
Tom Watson was educated at King Charles I school, Kidderminster, and the University of Hull, where he was elected President of the Students Union in 1992. He was Chair of the National Organisation of Labour Students from 1992-1993. 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. He then worked on the party's 1997 general election campaign, before going on to be National Political Officer of the AEEU trade union.
He was elected MP for West Bromwich East in 2001. In 2003, he included a weblog on his website. Attention was drawn to it by a page in which he parodied attempts by professional politicians to communicate with younger readers, entitled 'Teens!', which included such phrases as "We know that you're too busy fighting off your biological urges and being l33t hax0rs to Get Involved, but politics is cool, m'kay?". In 2004, he won the New Statesman New Media Award in the category of elected representative for using his weblog to further the democratic process.
Tom Watson was campaign organiser for the Labour Party in the Birmingham Hodge Hill by-election in July 2004, in which he succeeded in narrowly retaining the seat in difficult political times for the party. His streetfighting political style and the personal attacks on the Liberal Democrat candidate led to criticism, but he was appointed again to lead the campaign in the forthcoming Hartlepool by-election.
Watson was appointed as an Assistant Government Whip on September 9, 2004 and was nominated as a Top Toadie by The Guardian Diary on January 6, 2005 *. He was promoted on May 5, 2006 to the Ministry of Defence.
External links
- Tom Watson official blog
- Guardian Unlimited Politics - Ask Aristotle: Tom Watson MP
- TheyWorkForYou.com - Tom Watson MP
- The Public Whip - Tom Watson MP voting record
Current British MPs | 1967 births | Living people | UK Labour Party politicians | British MPs | British bloggers
"Tom Watson (politician)"