Stephen Daniel Twigg (born 25 December 1966) is a British Labour Co-op politician who has served as the 8th Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association since August 2020.
Following Ed Miliband's election to the Labour leadership, he made Twigg a Shadow Foreign Office Minister.
Twigg's ward colleagues were both fellow future Labour MPs: Margaret Hodge and Meg Hillier.
Portillo, a cabinet minister, had been widely tipped to be the next Tory leader,[9] and the loss of his seat was one of the most unexpected results of the election.
[citation needed] Twigg was forced to give up his role as general secretary of the Fabian Society following this unexpected victory in what had been regarded as a safe Conservative seat.
Following the 2001 election, Twigg was appointed Parliamentary secretary to the Leader of the House of Commons, Robin Cook,[10] and in 2002 became a junior minister in the Department for Education and Skills, from where he led the London Challenge initiative.
[citation needed] In the 2005 election, Twigg lost his seat to the Conservative Party candidate, David Burrowes, by a margin of 1,747 votes (a swing of 8.7%).
On 12 December 2005, Twigg was arrested in central London for being drunk and incapable in a public place and taken to Marylebone police station.
"[13] Twigg became chairman of Progress, an independent organisation for Labour party members, and director of the Foreign Policy Centre, a think tank which develops long-term multilateral approaches to global problems.
Twigg was selected as the Labour Co-operative candidate for the Liverpool West Derby constituency at the 2010 general election.