Tom Harwood

Harwood was born on 26 August 1996[2][3] in Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, England.[4] His father is a partner at a property consultancy, and his mother is a primary school teacher. He has a sister.[5][6] Harwood attended The Perse School, an independent school in Cambridge.[7] He studied politics at St Mary's College, Durham where he was also the president of the Durham Union Society.[8][9] Harwood ran a campaign to become a National Union of Students (NUS) delegate, criticising the organisation with viral videos and satirical pledges such as using NUS funds to build a fully functional Death Star, and defeating the terrorist group ISIS with an NUS boycott.[8][10] He was elected in a landslide victory that gained national attention in December 2016.[11] After his election, he appeared on the BBC's Daily Politics show.[12]

He later ran for the presidency of the NUS in 2017 with a similar campaign and was endorsed by the University of Manchester Students' Union.[13][14] The union was the only one to hold a primary election in which students could vote for their candidate.[15] Their vote mandated their delegates to vote for him in the NUS presidential election.[14] He finished a distant third in the election, with 35 votes out of the 1,200 NUS delegates.[16] In the following year, Harwood ran another satirical campaign to lower the voting age to twelve.[17]

Also while at university, Harwood became the national chair of pro-Brexit campaign group Students for Britain, an arm of the official Brexit campaign organisation Vote Leave.[18][19] In 2017, he worked for the American libertarian organisation Students for Liberty.[20] In May 2018, he was a Conservative Party candidate for the East Chesterton ward in the 2018 Cambridge City Council election. In the election, the two Labour candidates were elected.[21] Harwood received 336 votes, and finished in 6th place.[22] Harwood became a reporter for the right-wing political blog Guido Fawkes in July 2018.[23]

He was listed in talk radio station LBC's list of top 100 most influential Conservatives of 2019.[24] Harwood is a former member of Turning Point UK, an offshoot of the US right-wing student organisation Turning Point USA.[25][26] He appeared prominently in their launch but days later distanced himself from the group.[27] He has written articles for the newspaper The Daily Telegraph since May 2019.[28] Harwood has appeared as a political commentator on Good Morning Britain, Newsnight, BBC Breakfast and Question Time.[29] In 2020, he was listed in the Tatler 'New Power Networkers' list.[30]

Harwood had advocated an uncompromising Brexit negotiating stance, favouring a comprehensive free trade agreement with the EU whilst stating that a no deal outcome with the European Union offers opportunities to the UK.[31] He believes in a "deregulated, low tax, high wage UK"[32] and has expressed support for "liberal democracy".[33] Harwood has supported the Black Lives Matter movement, arguing "it is wrong to depict the broader movement as simply another offshoot of Momentum".[34] He has also opposed the proliferation of quangos.[35]

• Tom Harwood on The Telegraph