Thomas Anthony Watson, Baron Watson of Wyre Forest (born 8 January 1967) is a British politician who served as Deputy Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2019. A Member of the House of Lords since 2022, 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 Veterans from May to September 2006 and Parliamentary Secretary for the Cabinet Office from 2008 to 2009. In October 2011, Ed Miliband appointed him as the Labour Party's National Campaign Coordinator and Deputy Chair. He resigned from both roles in July 2013, following a controversy over the selection of a new parliamentary candidate for Falkirk. 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 and later that year was made a senior adviser on problem gambling to Flutter Entertainment. Source: Wikipedia (en)