Tom Watson’s tactics are despicable – he should resign.

I don’t whether to laugh at Tom Watson, be angry or pity him. Perhaps all three.

I warmly applauded (on this very site) his work on the topic of child abuse . But following Corbyn’s election, his role as a ‘fixer’ has become clear. I now regard him as a greasy used-car salesman and not a very good one.

Watson’s role in trying to undermine the mandate given to Jeremy Corbyn by Labour members has been well documented.  He plots to re-establish Labour as a private members club for a clique of MP’s and party apparatchiks, which explains his hostility to the surge in membership and participation. Tom has worked daily with the corporate media to smear these hugely positive developments as both dangerous and bad.

Tom is fighting to save his political career after a car crash interview with The Guardian in which he breezily insulted sections of Labour’s expanded membership as brainwashed Trotskyite entryists – he smeared Momentum thus:

there are some old hands twisting young arms in this process, and I’m under no illusions about what’s going on. They are caucusing and factionalising and putting pressure where they can, and that’s how Trotsky entryists operate.

 and admitted he wanted to reverse the recent democratisation of the party

Watson wants to reverse Ed Miliband’s “terrible error of judgment” and reinstate the old electoral college system, which accorded one-third of the votes in a leadership election to the PLP and a third each to the unions and the members.

No big surprise but very illuminating. Tom has felt the need to wade back into the media to try and justify himself.

He wrote a letter to Jeremy Corbyn offering ‘proof’ of all the dastardly Trotskyite goings on within the grassroots of the party. Political journalist Mike Sivier wasn’t the only person to notice the startling similarity between Watson’s letter and material to be found on the Progress website – material cribbed from a book about the banned group Militant Tendency in the 1980’s.

Poor Tom would have to get his information about local Labour meetings from a website taking stuff from a book about a defunct group from the 80’s. Watson is about as connected to the grassroots these days as I am to car wash attendants at Disneyland.

The intended recipient of the letter was not Corbyn of course but the corporate media – naturally The Guardian was very pleased!    

Watson was posting videos of Peter Taaffe of the Socialist Party on his Facebook page this morning as further ‘evidence’ of how this tiny group was somehow brainwashing a membership of half a million.

The political logic is simple enough – throw up enough smears and some people will believe them. The plan is to discredit Corbyn and his supporters as hard left loonies, a tactic borrowed from the gutter right wing press.

Watson’s lies (and they are lies) will unquestionably hurt the Labour Party – that doesn’t seem to trouble him one jot.

His tactics reveal a man with a casual disregard for the truth, a man who will peddle lies for personal gain. His patronising contempt for Labour’s invigorated membership is there for all to see.

Tom Watson’s attempt to smear Momentum (the most heartening movement I have seen in British politics in my lifetime) and Corbyn by association are despicable.

There can be no tenable place for a Deputy Leader of the Labour Party who is briefing the media twice daily against its own leader and membership. 

Tom Watson is an out of control disgrace and he should resign. He cannot be sacked, his position is secured behind his fellow plotters at Westminster but if he has a shred of integrity he should go.

Watson’s continued presence as Deputy Leader can only hurt Labour still further and his role in the coup against Corbyn makes his position as Deputy untenable.

My hunch is that the membership will have to force him out in the end. When that happens, I trust that Mr Watson will refrain from blaming Trotskyite spies – his demise is all his own work.  

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