Politics

Jason Beattie: Timing of Tom Watson resignation shows he's lost none of his political gifts


The timing of his departure showed Tom Watson has lost none of his political gifts. The scene-stealing announcement landed just as Boris Johnson began to address his first big campaign rally.

Someone of Watson’s experience was not going to waste a chance to knock the Tories off the news cycle.

This canniness is one of the reasons he managed to survive for so long as deputy Labour leader despite his very public differences with Jeremy Corbyn.

Now he has decided to throw in the towel.

The former heavyweight, in both senses of the word, may be genuine in wanting a second career campaigning on public health issues.

Watson is quitting as an MP

The shock move will take attention off the calamitous start to the campaign by the Tories

 

But his departure is a blow to those fellow Labour MPs who still hope to wrest the party back from the Corbynites.

By leaving, he has paid Corbyn a backhanded compliment. He has calculated that whatever happens in the election, the Labour Party he joined has been replaced by a very different organisation.

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There are still some Blairite Labour MPs who believe the cause is not lost and a party that went from Tony Blair to Corbyn in 10 years can just as easily go back.

But with Watson going they now have lost their figurehead — and perhaps that battle.





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