Tom Watson – LabourList’s MP of the month

By Mark Ferguson / @markfergusonuk

As part of our July State of the Party survey (results here), we asked you – for the first time – to identify the Labour MP who had impressed you the most over the last month. This was the first in what we are hoping will become a monthly “MP of the month” contest to identify the Labour MP who has impressed you most in the last month – we’ll be combining it with the State of the Party survey from now on.

The winner this month – by an overwhelming margin – was Tom Watson.

Perhaps this isn’t surprising – considering the events of the past month – but Watson finished well ahead of his two closest competitiors, Chris Bryant and Ed Miliband (both of whom have also had a successful and high profile month thanks to the phone hacking scandal). Watson has been fighting a crusade against News International for years, and his focus on phone hacking and bringing those responsible to justice has been relentless. Few could have forseen the impact his campaign would have, but Tom never wavered – and you’ve clearly seen something you admire in that, as have we.

We’ll be presenting Tom with his award in the coming weeks. In the meantime, here’s a clip of one of his recent speeches in the house on phone hacking: