Tom Watson MP, the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, or ‘Tommy Two Dinners’ as he is affectionately known around the subsidised eateries of the House of Commons, has been up to his old-tricks.
Watson likes to portray himself as a benign peacemaker and a go-between for Jeremy Corbyn and his detractors in the Parliamentary Labour Party. He is kidding nobody.
If Watson had not been elected the Deputy Leader you can guarantee that he would have been a delighted participant in Hilary Benn’s orchestrated stream of Shadow Cabinet resignations.
There are many Labour Party members who feel that they were mis-sold Tom Watson when they voted for him in 2015, and certainly would not vote for him again in the future. He has proven himself to be a brazen and shameless Trojan-horse.
In retrospect it shouldn’t have come as a surprise. He has form for briefing, smearing, and undermining elected leaders of the Labour Party. In 2007, Watson was central in the plot to force Tony Blair to resign, so that his man, Gordon Brown, could be shoe-horned into the party leadership.
While I have no sympathy for Blair, Watson’s behaviour showed exactly what kind of a man he is. He tries to be a master of the dark arts, yet fails miserably. He has become a useful idiot for those who benefit from duplicitous buffoonery – just as he was in 2007.
Watson’s recent claims of Trotskyite entryism into the Labour Party are baseless hyperbole that the anti-Corbyn media have gleefully recycled into suggestions of an impending Bolshevik revolution.
Watson had sent a letter to Corbyn claiming to have evidence of entryism and with a list of tactics of how entryists take over individual CLPs. It was claimed that the list had been taken from the recently reissued book ‘Militant’ – that chronicles the Militant Tendency and entryism into the Labour Party during the 1980’s, by the journalist, Michael Crick.
With a delicious irony it then transpired that the list of tactics were not from Crick’s book, but were in fact lifted directly from a review of the book on the website of the party-within-a-party ‘Progress’.
Maybe Watson had been duped, or maybe his feeble attempt at causing conflict had blown up in his face. Either way, his behaviour has been shameful. If you give Watson the benefit of the doubt, cast your minds back to when he put himself forward as the mediator between Corbyn, his opponents, and the trade unions; only to pull the plug on the meeting at the last minute – in what Len McCluskey, Leader of the UNITE union, described as – “an act of sabotage” and a “disingenuous manoeuvre.”
If you had ever considered reading Watson’s ‘Register of Interests’ don’t bother; it would be quicker to read Tolstoy’s War and Peace. He certainly enjoys donations from many businesses and wealthy individuals. The largest of which was £200,000 earlier this year from the son of the infamous fascist Oswald Mosely, and former fascist himself, Max Mosely. The figure is apparently to support the running costs of his office.
Watson’s sticky prints are all over the failed-coup, leadership challenges, the briefing and smearing. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him.
‘Respect Watson’s mandate’ is the cry from the right of the party, as they seek to defend him against criticism – smugly aping Corbyn supporters. Yet it is Watson, not Corbyn, who would be in grave danger of losing his position, should they both be up for re-election.
