I can't believe that I once thought that Tom Watson would make a fairly good deputy leader of the Labour Party.
During the Labour deputy leadership election in 2015 he stood out as the best candidate in an absolutely woeful field that included Angela "integrity" Eagle, Ben Bradshaw and the corrosively right-wing Blairite Caroline Flint. In comparison to a box of turds like that, it's no surprise that Watson appeared to be chocolate.
Picking sides
Watson's performances since the pre-planned but ineptly conducted Anyone But Corbyn coup attempt was launched have been absolutely woeful.
Instead of acting like a bridge between the rival factions and trying to mitigate as much of the damage to the party as possible, Watson quickly decided to actively side with the coup-plotters and actually fuel the flames of the dispute.
His decision to publicly appeal for Corbyn to resign was ridiculous. Not only because it completely destroyed his chance to act as the neutral level-headed figure when everyone else was losing theirs, it also came far far too late in the day because it was already absolutely clear that Corbyn was going to stand his ground and demand that any challenger take him on in a democratic leadership election.
"Reds under the bed!"
Watson's latest contributions to the leadership debate are even more woeful than his ridiculous decision to pick a side rather than act as a level-headed intermediary.
Watson has somehow decided that it's a good idea to paint the leadership contest as a take-over of the party orchestrated by a bunch of unnamed knarled old Trotskysist from the 1980s brainwashing and bullying younger Labour Party members into supporting Corbyn!
Here's one of his comments:
"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."
Not only is it incredibly damaging to the Labour Party to claim that it has been infiltrated by a bunch of bulling Trotskyists and that tens of thousands of young Labour members are just a bunch of naive easily-led idiots, it's also such a fantastical story that only fools could believe it.
In fact it's such a ludicrous piece of "reds under the bed!" fearmongering it's difficult to understand what the point of it actually is.
It seems more like a story designed to damage the Labour Party as much as possible in the minds of gullible S*n, Express and Daily Mail readers than anything contrived with the aim of convincing anyone with the remotest working knowledge of the Labour Party into turning against Jeremy Corbyn and voting for his favoured Anyone But Corbyn candidate.
Seriously. If you were a Labour Party member backing Corbyn then a supporter of the rival candidate tried to portray you as either a Trotskyist infiltrator, or someone weak-willed and gullible enough to be manipulated by Trotskyist infiltrators, do you think that would make you want to switch sides, or do you think it would make you strengthen your resolve to fight back against the people who are smearing you and your fellow Corbyn supporters so desperately?
The use of such blatant smears against members of the Labour Party who happen to support Jeremy Corbyn illustrates how little regard Watson has for the public reputation of the party that elected him as their deputy leader just last year.
Democracy
Another of Watson's utterly appalling comments came in regard to Ed Miliband's decision to democratise the Labour Party a little bit by turning the leadership election from an undemocratic shambles that afforded far too much power to Labour MPs into a proper One Member One Vote democracy.
Watson described this reform as a "terrible error of judgement" and said that he would support moves to strip voting power from ordinary party members in order to rebalance the scales of decision making back in favour of the Labour MPs.
And there you have it. The complacent, self-entitled, anti-democratic attitude of the anti-Corbyn mob. To them democracy is a "terrible error of judgement" that needs to be scrapped because the uppity plebs keep voting for the wrong candidate!
In my view Miliband's democratic reform to the Labour Party was one of his only positive legacies of a tepid, hopelessly uninspiring failure of a leadership. This reform has allowed Labour to become a mass participation political movement with more members than every other political party in the UK combined.
If anything is going to force real reform of the complacent, outdated, out-of-touch, unrepresentative, corruption-riddled, expenses-scamming and widely reviled Westminster establishment club, then it's going to be Labour's bold new experiment in participatory democracy.
Conclusion
If picking sides rather than trying to build bridges, woeful "reds under the bed!" fearmongering tactics and appalling displays of contempt for the concept of democracy are the kinds of contributions the Labour Party deputy leader is making to the leadership debate, then perhaps keeping his thoughts to himself for the duration would be better for everyone concerned? Apart from the Tories of course, who will be gleefully milking Tom Watson's damaging "Trotsky entryist" fearmongering trope for years to come.
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This ludicrous newspaper article in the Guardian provides a perfect example of how the mainstream media use false narratives and misleading language to frame the political debate. The headline clearly implies that the Labour leader Corbyn is some kind of extremist and that by taking these minor backbench positions the "moderates" have dealt Corbyn some kind of crucial strategic blow.
These people are not moderates, they are the unpopular right-wing fringe of the Labour Party
If you actually read the article you find that several of these so-called "moderates" are from the most right-wing fringe of the Labour Party. There's Caroline Flint (pictured) who is economically right-wing and has extremist right-wing authoritarian views on drug use. There's Tristram Hunt who did bollocks all as shadow education secretary to oppose the Tories as they privatised thousands of state schools into the hands of unaccountable private sector pseudo-charities (several of them operated by major Tory party donors), and only days previously was openly fantasising about how he'd love to see the "top 1%" taking control of the Labour Party away from the uppity plebs who elected Corbyn. And there's Chris Leslie, the Osbornite former caretaker shadow chancellor who expends far more effort attacking the current Labour leadership than he ever did criticising the Tories and their ideological austerity con.
The author (Patrick Wintour) even goes on to describe Chuka Umunna and Rachel Reeves as "moderates". Umunna is the absolute embodiment of the unmistakably right-wing self-serving Blairite careerist politician that pushes people away from the Labour Party in droves, and Rachel Reeves once promised to be even tougher on the most vulnerable people in society than Iain Duncan Smith's regime of terror!
It turns out that of the 17 Labour MPs to walk unopposed into these backbench roles, 10 of them openly supported Liz Kendall, who was the most right-wing of the four Labour Leadership candidates and ended up securing just 4.5% of the vote (compared to Jeremy Corbyn's 59.5%). That's pretty clear evidence that these people are not "moderates", but actually representatives of a tiny and deeply unpopular right-wing fringe of the Labour Party.
Jeremy Corbyn is a moderate
Jeremy Corbyn is an economic moderate. He's the kind of mild-mannered social democrat who would be considered quite normal in any of the Scandinavian social democratic countries. The problem is that the political spectrum in the UK has been skewed so far to the right over the last four decades that these days anyone who doesn't subscribe to George Osborne's fanatically right-wing economic agenda is derided as some kind of raving communist by the bulk of the mainstream press.
The idea that it's wrong to load the burden of austerity onto the poor and ordinary in order to pay for the excesses of the tiny super-rich minority isn't extremist. If more people understood that this is precisely what is happening right now, they'd see that Corbyn is actually talking a lot of sense.
The idea that the vital infrastructure and services should be run as not-for-profit public services isn't extremist, in fact the majority of the British public agree with Corbyn on that one.
The idea that the NHS shouldn't be deliberately starved of funding, carved up and given away to the private sector isn't extremist, once again the majority of people agree with Corbyn on that one too.
Jeremy Corbyn isn't an extremist and neither are the majority of the public who agree with many of his core economic policies. The problem is that right-wingers in the mainstream media have skewed the debate so far to the right that ideologically driven fanatics like George Osborne and David Cameron are described as the norm, while mild-mannered social democrats like Jeremy Corbyn are derided as dangerous extremists.
This was no kind of victory
As for their so-called flexing of muscles, most of these right-wingers obtained their backbench committee positions completely unopposed. Corbyn undeniably has the support of the Labour membership, but the Blairites who preceded him spent the last two decades parachuting in economically right-wing candidates into Labour safe seats, meaning there just aren't enough non-Blairite politicians left in the party to fill every minor position. It's hardly a victory for right-wingers like Flint, Hunt and Leslie that there's nobody left to oppose them taking up their minor backbench roles, it's a demonstration of how far the Parliamentary Labour Party has drifted from its founding principles.
It's absolutely clear that the vast majority of Labour Party supporters don't want these right-wingers running the party, but after two decades of New Labour purging the party of dissenting voices there just aren't enough non-Blairite MPs left to fill every minor backbench role, so some of these positions have ended up going to embarrassments like Caroline Flint, Tristram Hunt and Chris Leslie.
The agenda
The mainstream media agenda to demonise Jeremy Corbyn as an extremist and talk up the most right-wing elements of the Labour Party as "moderates" couldn't be clearer.
The idea that by positioning themselves ever so slightly to the left of the most right-wing Tory government in living memory these people are somehow "moderates" is utterly ridiculous. As is the idea that a Labour Party led by these people would be remotely electable. These people couldn't even get 5% of Labour Party supporters to back their right-wing candidate during the Labour leadership election, so how on earth could they ever get some 25% of the entire electorate to buy into their disgusting brand of pink Thatcherism?
I think the conclusion here is pretty obvious. I'm pretty sure that most politically aware people know by now to take the Murdoch Press and the Daily Mail with a huge pinch of salt, but the obvious false narrative and biased language in this Guardian piece should serve as a warning that it's important to always use your critical judgement whatever the source.
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With all of the attention Jeremy Corbyn has been generating with his bid to become Labour Party leader, it's easy to forget that the position of deputy leader of the Labour Party is also up for election.
Several people have written to me to request an article providing more information on the five candidates to become Labour's second in command, so here it is.
I'm going to profile the five candidates, then conclude by stating some general conclusions.
Tom Watson
Tom Watson is the runaway favourite to become deputy leader of the Labour Party. At 48 he is the second youngest of the candidates, and he's been an MP since 2001.
Watson picked up 61 nominations from his fellow MPs (more than any of the other candidates), many from the small band of Labour "good guys" like Dennis Skinner, Ian Mearns, Richard Burgon and Greame Morris. He also won 164 Constituency Labour Party nominations, which is almost as many as all of the other candidates added together (Stella Creasy came second with 77).
Watson served as Minister for Digital Economy between 2008 and 2009 where he worked to open up government data to public scrutiny, and encourage government departments to consider the use of in-house solutions and open source software instead of signing inflexible and expensive outsourcing contracts every time they needed to deal with an IT issue. It's always nice to see a government minister who has a bit of knowledge in their field and enthusiasm for what they're doing.
It's no surprise that he is the leading candidate for the job of deputy leader, he has a decent amount of ministerial experience, a track record of campaigning on issues like Phone Hacking, the paedophile politicians scandals, and in opposition to his own party's hopelessly botched Digital Economy Bill. Another thing that counts in his favour is that all of this public campaigning has made him a relatively well known face, at least amongst the politically engaged.
The only significant black mark against him is that he was caught out during the expenses scandal. He was nowhere near as egregious as many of his parliamentary colleagues, but he wasn't completely clean either, spending the maximum allowance of £4,800 on food in 2005 (the equivalent of 85 weeks worth of Jobseekers' Allowance in 2005 prices).
Watson has made it clear that he believes that Labour is at its strongest when it is standing up for ordinary people and campaigning against injustice. I'm pretty sure that's a message that anyone could get behind.
Tom Watson's voting record at They Work For You.
Stella Creasy
At 38 Stella Creasy is by far the youngest of the candidates, and having only been an MP since 2010, she's also the least experienced. Despite her age and lack of ministerial experience, she is running second in the race, comfortably ahead of the three other candidates, but significantly behind Tom Watson.
Before becoming an MP Creasy worked in PR and lobbying, which is hardly confidence inspiring stuff, but since entering parliament she's actually impressed a lot by leading the campaign against the exploitative practices of Payday loan companies (that have been known to charge vulnerable people annual interest rates of over 5,000% on their loans).
In 2013 Creasy was subject to vile misogynistic abuse on Twitter, and I couldn't agree more with her assertion that rape threats are criminal behaviour "not a matter of bad manners". The following year one of her abusers was jailed for the rape threats he had made against her.
Creasy has talked a lot about how Labour needs to become a modern grass roots organisation that listens to its party members and to ordinary people rather than dictating terms from above. Even if she doesn't become deputy leader, I'm sure her ideas will still be more than welcome.
Stella Creasy's voting record at They Work For You.
Angela Eagle
Angela Eagle is 54, and having been an MP since 1992, she's the most experienced of the five. Under Gordon Brown's leadership of the party she served in two treasury position and as pensions minister. In opposition she served as Shadow Leader of the Commons for Ed Miliband.
Eagle comes from a working class background, but then she's also an Oxford PPE graduate which is by far the most over-represented demographic in Westminster politics, with dozens of politicians having studied this Oxford University course.
In April 2008 Eagle, who was Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury at the time, made a howler every bit as bad as Liam Byrne's ludicrous "there's no money" note (if not worse because what she said wasn't even intended as a poorly considered joke). Her response to Liberal Democrat concerns that the UK was experiencing a housing bubble was to dismiss them as "a colourful and lurid fiction that has no real bearing on the macroeconomic reality". We all now know what was going on in 2007-08 and how property prices crashed and the financial sector ended up being rescued from complete insolvency with the biggest state sector interventions in history. If anyone had no understanding of the macroeconomic reality at the time it was actually Angela Eagle.
Eagle is probably best known as the MP who was on the receiving end of David Cameron's sexist "calm down dear" put down, which is a bit sad really because she's had a long and successful political career. I don't have anything against her, but she just doesn't strike me as the kind of inspirational politician Labour need in order to fight back against the Tories either.
Angela Eagle's voting record at They Work For You.
Caroline Flint
Caroline Flint is 53 and has been an MP since Tony Blair's landslide victory in 1997. She had a difficult upbringing and knows what it's like to struggle on the breadline, so one would expect her to be able to empathise with the many victims of Tory ideological austerity.
If you think Angela Eagle's gaffe about the state of the economy during the biggest economic crisis in generations was bad, then you're going to be horrified at some of Caroline Flint's blunders.
When Flint was Minister for Europe she made a public admission that she hadn't even read the Lisbon Treaty, which was quite extraordinary given that her role was to oversee the implementation of the Lisbon Treaty! In May 2008 she was photographed entering Downing Street with her briefing papers visible, which included an admission that "we can't tell how bad it will get" in relation to the ongoing economic meltdown that Angela Eagle had been dismissing as "a lurid and colourful fiction" just the month previously!
Flint made headlines again when she resigned from Gordon Brown's government with an attack on his personality and a claim that she'd been treated like "female window dressing". Regular readers will know that I'm no staunch defender of Gordon Brown, but if her job was to be more than "female window dressing" the least she could have done is read the vital documents she obviously should have, and not allowed the press to photograph her confidential briefing papers!
Flint is also responsible for an appalling piece of ideologically driven government legislation that completely ignored the scientific advice. During her stint in the Home Office she pushed through legislation to classify raw psylocybin mushrooms (magic mushrooms) as Class A drugs, meaning a potential 7 year prison sentence for anyone who as much as picks one of Britain's most commonly occurring wild mushrooms! The fact that she drove this illogical legislation through parliament marks her out as the kind of authoritarian ideologically driven moral puritan who stands in the way of this country ever adopting a rational evidence based drugs policy.
I find it alarming that Caroline Flint is running third in the contest, but then perhaps that says more about how poor Angela Eagle and Ben Bradshaw are as candidates than it does about her suitability for the job?
Caroline Flint's voting record at They Work For You.
Ben Bradshaw
Bradshaw is 54 and he too became an MP in 1997. Most of the polls having him vying with Angela Eagle to avoid finishing last in the contest, which is no surprise.
When he was a health minister he advised people who couldn't find an NHS dentist to go to their GP - advice that was ridiculed by the British Medical Association; his claim that GPs were operating "gentlemen's agreements" to stop patients moving between surgeries was described as "absolute nonsense" by the BMA, and he even launched a defence of excessive parking fees at NHS hospitals with a bizarre claim that the funds were needed in order to provide NHS services, even though the NHS ran a large £1.8 billion surplus that year.
What is worse than all of Bradshaw's gaffes is the fact that during his time at the Department of Health he oversaw a number of NHS privatisation schemes that laid the groundwork for the outright Tory assault on the NHS that was the Health and Social Care Act 2012.
Another black mark against Ben Bradshaw is the fact that he was a staunch defender of the disastrous NHS National Programme for IT that saw costs balloon from £2.3 billion to £12.4 billion before it was scrapped. In 2013 the scheme that Bradshaw was so keen to defend when he was a health minister was lambasted by the Public Accounts Committee as one of "the worst and most expensive contracting fiascos ever".
Despite his appalling track record as a health minister, Bradshaw is clearly a good constituency MP, having won his seat in Exeter off the Tories in 1997 and kept it ever since. On the electoral map of the UK Bradshaw's constituency is a tiny dot of red in a vast ocean of blue down south.
Ben Bradshaw's voting record at They Work For You.
Conclusions
It is worth noting that of the nine candidates for leader and deputy leader, five of them are female. It could be seen as a cause for celebration that there are so many women in the Labour leadership contests, however, in my opinion Stella Creasy is the only one of them with really good leadership potential, and three of the others (Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper and Caroline Flint) would surely drive people away from the Labour Party in droves, so maybe it's not that good after all.
I don't have much time for Angela Eagle, but in my opinion she's nowhere near as bad as gaffe prone disasters like Caroline Flint and Ben Bradshaw. It should be a relief to most people that these three candidates are all vanishingly unlikely to get the job.
It gives me a bit of faith in the grass roots Labour Party membership that the two leading candidates in the deputy leadership election are the two I consider to be the outstanding candidates. Tom Watson looks very likely to win, but Stella Creasy is still very young so it wouldn't be a disaster for her to come second. I think she would make a very good shadow minister in a Corbyn-Watson led party, and judging by her first five years in parliament, she's got a bright future ahead of her whatever the outcome.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
