Tom Watson (politician)

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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 was principally known for being the first MP to start a blog. From May 5 to September 6, 2006, he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence until he resigned from government after urging Tony Blair to resign.

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. 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^[1]. He was promoted on May 5, 2006 to the Ministry of Defence.

On September 5, 2006 it was reported that he had signed a letter to Tony Blair requesting that the Prime Minister resign to end the uncertainty over his succession. ^[2]. 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 September 6, 2006, he resigned his ministerial position and released a further statement calling on Tony Blair to resign.^[3]

It is with the greatest sadness that I have to say that I no longer believe that your remaining in office is in the interest of either the party or the country ... How and why this situation has arisen no longer matters. I share the view of the overwhelming majority of the party and the country that the only way the party and the government can renew itself in office is urgently to renew its leadership.

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. He said that he had planned to dismiss him from Government for his behaviour.

Within days of the incident suggestions appeared that Watson had been to Chancellor Gordon Brown's residence in Scotland only the day before the memo was sent to Tony Blair. Watson claimed he was dropping off a present for Brown's new baby Fraser, and that the issue of the note, nor "any politics" were discussed.^{[citation needed]}

As Watson recounted on his webblog, his reception at Labour Party Conference a few weeks after his resignation got a mixed reaction from Labour Party colleagues. Some sought him out to congratulate him, whilst others sought him out to be sarcastic or to be abusive. One such encounter was with Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, who asked Watson, whilst he was waiting to be interviewed by Channel 4 News, if he was "going to resign again?"!

Watson's actions, by his own admission on his webblog and elsewhere, angered many of his colleagues within the Labour Party, but also pleased many.