page_title: Tom Watson (Labour politician)
hierarchical_section_title: Tom Watson (Labour politician)
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of Tom Watson member of the Parliament of the United Kingdom taken in 2018.
context_page_description: Thomas Anthony Watson is a British politician who served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2019 and Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from 2016 to 2019. A member of the Labour Party, he was Member of Parliament for West Bromwich East from 2001 to 2019.
  Born in Sheffield, Watson was raised in Kidderminster where he was educated at King Charles I School. He first became involved in Labour Party and trade union activism when studying at the University of Hull and was Chair of the National Organisation of Labour Students from 1992 to 1993. After working in marketing and advertising, he began working full-time for the Labour Party, including on its 1997 general election campaign, and then for the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union.
  Elected MP for West Bromwich East at the 2001 general election, Watson was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence from May to September 2006 and Minister for Digital Engagement and Civil Service Issues at the Cabinet Office from 2008 to 2009.
context_section_description: Thomas Anthony Watson (born 8 January 1967) is a British politician who served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2019 and Shadow Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport from 2016 to 2019. A member of the Labour Party, he was Member of Parliament (MP) for West Bromwich East from 2001 to 2019.
  Born in Sheffield, Watson was raised in Kidderminster where he was educated at King Charles I School. He first became involved in Labour Party and trade union activism when studying at the University of Hull and was Chair of the National Organisation of Labour Students from 1992 to 1993. After working in marketing and advertising, he began working full-time for the Labour Party, including on its  1997 general election campaign, and then for the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union.
  Elected MP for West Bromwich East at the 2001 general election, Watson was Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence from May to September 2006 and Minister for Digital Engagement and Civil Service Issues at the Cabinet Office from 2008 to 2009. In October 2011, Ed Miliband appointed him as Deputy Chair of the National Executive Committee and the Labour Party's Campaign Coordinator for the 2015 general election. He resigned from both roles in July 2013 following a controversy over the selection of a new parliamentary candidate for Falkirk to replace Eric Joyce.
  On 12 September 2015, Watson was elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, alongside new leader Jeremy Corbyn, gaining 198,962 votes or 50.7%, including second preference votes from those who voted for other candidates. Following the conviction of Carl Beech in July 2019 for making false allegations of paedophilia, Watson was criticised by high-profile victims and their relatives for his role in the affair. On 6 November 2019, Watson announced that he would be standing down both as an MP and as Deputy Leader, and leave office on 12 December 2019, stating that his reasons for standing down were 'personal, not political.' He later admitted that he had voted for Owen Smith in the 2016 leadership election. In March 2020, he was appointed Chair of UK Music.
caption: Watson in 2018
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