Tom Watson makes barnstorming speech. Sees off split, rescues Tories
The Labour party, or the moderate parts of it, needed cheering up. And my goodness deputy leader Tom Watson cheered them up with his speech at party conference in Liverpool today. In an echo of Neil Kinnock’s memorable denunciation of Militant, in 1985, Watson confronted the Momentum members and cultist Corbynistas with the reality that Labour will have to win an election to get a chance to do anything.
The key moment came when he was being heckled by a Corbyn supporter and said: “I don’t think she got the unity memo Jeremy.” The hall erupted in applause and cheering, for he had stuck it to the pious people who are destroying Labour. Corbyn the twit looked very uncomfortable on stage at this. It was tremendous to see.
This all followed a heartfelt defence by Watson of the New Labour record in government. It shows how far Labour has fallen that such a proud defence should sound so shocking and daring. Even if you are a sceptic who prefers to focus on the wrecking of the UK economy by the over-reliance on a madcap banking expansion, the destruction of the UK constitution and the enabling of the SNP, and the problems in the field of foreign affairs, New Labour was an extremely potent political force. On education in England the record was one of reform.
Watson’s speech has got everyone there in Liverpool at the conference or looking on from afar (not many people) very excited. It has been declared “a moment” by the media, denoting something which is potentially game-changing and immensely significant. The moderates have fight left in them. Tom Watson has showed the way. Feel the emotion. Labour’s coming home.
But that simply highlights the problem with the Labour party. Its fixation with folklore, its sheer sentimentality and tendency to tear-stained self-regard, means that unless it has a charismatic leader such as Tony Blair – in his pre-imperial phase – it will grab at anything that means it can avoid a hard choice. The Tories are far more ruthless, as has been demonstrated since Christmas, or indeed since the late 19th century,
Watson’s speech probably is significant, but mainly because it makes a split in Labour now all but unthinkable. The moderates have their historic rallying point in Watson and it will be said he has provided a template for fighting back. Invigorated, they will stay, bogged down in deselection battles. A chance to engineer a realignment and a new party or movement of the moderate centre-left that might have challenged the Tories (with a new membership and new technology) will have been lost. Such a new non-Socialist party might have built a moderate coalition, leaving Labour under Corbyn to wither. Instead the moderates will spend years fighting the left and the more terrible trade union leaders.
And then somehow, maybe, Watson wins the leadership in 2020. So what? As a potential leader he is only marginally more sellable to England as a Prime Minister than Corbyn himself. Or Watson facilitates the election of someone who has his machine’s backing, and that person will have to carry enough of the old Corbynite left membership to win the leadership. Meaning that person will struggle to assemble the policies and the votes needed to convince the electorate. This way they will still be stuck in this mess in post-Brexit England come the mid-2020s.
Lucky old Tories.
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Iain Martin and the team make sense of the news, providing commentary and analysis on the stories that matter in politics, geopolitics, economics and culture.