You might have thought that any Labour politician who had accepted more than half a million quid from a man now proven to have a revolting, racist past would do the decent thing.
That is: apologise, promise to repay every penny and slither away under the nearest stone.
Sadly, the decent thing is a course of action utterly alien to Thomas Anthony Watson, deputy leader of the Labour Party.
Yesterday, after the full facts about his fairy godfather Max Mosley were exposed by a Daily Mail investigation, Watson remained unrepentant and defiant.
Sadly, the decent thing is a course of action utterly alien to Thomas Anthony Watson, deputy leader of the Labour Party
Far from distancing himself from Mad Max, Watson rallied to the defence of a man he calls his friend.
He told MPs: ‘If I thought for one moment that (Mosley) held those views contained in that leaflet 57 years ago, I would not have given him the time of day.’
Well, he knows now. The 1961 by-election leaflet to which he was referring was uncovered by this newspaper.
Published by Mosley, it accused Caribbean immigrants of spreading diseases and threatening children’s health.
Presumably, Watson has examined the evidence. In the Commons yesterday, he tried to joke about it ‘for the increasing number of colleagues who do not read the Daily Mail any more’.
Watson is insinuating that other newspapers, including this one — which has never engaged in phone-hacking — were involved in criminal activity, like the scandal that engulfed the Murdoch empire in 2011 and led to the closure of the News Of The World
Perhaps he missed the Channel 4 interview which confronted his benefactor with the leaflet. But I doubt it, since it is freely available online.
Watson told MPs that he intended to tackle the ‘Mosley issue head on’. Yet he didn’t mention the donation at all.
Instead he heaped praise on Mosley, describing him as ‘a man who, in the face of great family tragedy and overwhelming media intimidation, chose to use his limited resources to support the weak against the strong’.
The family tragedy, wheeled out so cynically to cultivate the sympathy vote, was a reference to Mosley’s son, Alexander, who died of a suspected drugs overdose in 2009. It was, indeed, tragic.
Otherwise, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh out loud. Limited resources? Mosley’s net worth was recently put at $16 million (around £11.6 million at the current rate of exchange).
That would appear to be a pretty conservative estimate.
Perhaps he missed the Channel 4 interview which confronted his benefactor with the leaflet. But I doubt it, since it is freely available online
Mosley, a former tax exile, has deep pockets.
In addition to the £540,000 he has bunged Watson, the ex-Formula 1 tycoon has bankrolled the state-recognised newspaper regulator Impress to the tune of £3.8 million.
Half a million here, almost four million there. It soon begins to add up to real money.
Curiously, none of the members of Impress — which, as I wrote on Tuesday, is stuffed with embittered, failed journalists, Left-wing lobbyists and professional Press-haters — has seen fit to make any comment on the Mail’s revelations about their paymaster.
That has been left to Watson, who sought yesterday to turn attention away from Mosley by attacking the Government’s commendable decision not to proceed with Part II of the ludicrous Leveson Inquisition into the Press.
He told the Commons: ‘The last thing the Murdoch empire, the Rothermere empire (which includes the Daily Mail), the Barclay brothers’ empire (the Telegraph) or the Mirror Group wanted was an inquiry into their dirty laundry, with powers under the Inquiries Act 2005 to obtain documents and compel witnesses to appear in public.
Watson was back to what he does best: smear-mongering and dirt-slinging, making wild allegations of wrong-doing without a shred of evidence
‘The last thing any of the newspapers wanted was more attention being paid to their methods at a time when it may well be revealed very soon that other papers, not necessarily the ones at the centre of the scandal in 2011, were also involved in criminality.’
Watson was back to what he does best: smear-mongering and dirt-slinging, making wild allegations of wrong-doing without a shred of evidence.
He is insinuating that other newspapers, including this one — which has never engaged in phone-hacking — were involved in criminal activity, like the scandal that engulfed the Murdoch empire in 2011 and led to the closure of the News Of The World.
Published by Mosley (pictured outside his Knightsbridge home yesterday), the 1961 by-election leaflet accused Caribbean immigrants of spreading diseases and threatening children’s health
Naturally, he has absolutely no proof to back up his allegations. He was hoping that Leveson II would be an all- encompassing fishing expedition, trawling for something — anything — to pin on newspapers of which he disapproves.
Hatred of the Press is what brought Watson and Mosley together. It was the News Of The World, of course, which revealed Mosley’s penchant for military-themed, sado-masochistic orgies with prostitutes.
This wouldn’t be the first time Watson has abused Parliamentary privilege to make unsubstantiated, politically motivated accusations of criminal behaviour.
He was the prime mover behind the hysterical Paedos In High Places witch-hunt, which tarnished the careers and reputations of so many innocent men. Watson launched a deranged vendetta against senior Conservatives, smearing them as child molesters, rapists and murderers.
He used Prime Minister’s Questions to claim that there was a ‘powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10’ during the Thatcher years.
He even compared former Tory Home Secretary Leon Brittan to the serial sex fiend Jimmy Savile and claimed that Brittan was being protected by a high-level cover-up, whose tentacles reached deep into the Tory establishment.
Brittan died before he was publicly exonerated. But Watson never properly apologised, saying only that he regretted any ‘distress’ which had been caused to Brittan’s family.
Watson also made lurid allegations of sex abuse at a North Wales children’s home, which sparked a media frenzy and emboldened soppy Sally Bercow, the Speaker’s wife, to hint clumsily that the former Tory treasurer Lord McAlpine was one of the guilty men.
Watson told MPs that he intended to tackle the ‘Mosley issue head on’. Yet he didn’t mention the donation at all
McAlpine was not in the best of health when these vile accusations surfaced and, even though he successfully sought legal redress to clear his name, he died just over a year later. Who can tell whether this disgraceful assault on his reputation hastened his death?
It’s worth pointing out that no newspaper would have contemplated making the kind of unsubstantiated charges that Watson flung at Tory ‘rapists and child abusers’.
At the time, in 2012, I wrote that he might just as well have led a torch-lit procession along Whitehall. That’s when I dubbed him the Nonce Finder General.
Up until then, I had used the nickname Tommy ‘Two Pizzas’ Watson — not just for his legendary appetite, but because he once spent so much (taxpayers’) money on food at Marks & Sparks, the store gave him a free pizza cutter wheel.
had used the nickname Tommy ‘Two Pizzas’ Watson — not just for his legendary appetite, but because he once spent so much (taxpayers’) money on food at Marks & Sparks, the store gave him a free pizza cutter wheel
That was the year he claimed £480 for food on his parliamentary expenses.
Since then, Watson has shed several stone, which is what usually happens (so I’m told) when a middle-aged man gets involved with a bird half his age — as Watson did after his marriage collapsed.
In addition to his new girlfriend, Watson struck up a flourishing bromance with Max Mosley, the multi-millionaire son of Britain’s most notorious fascist leader.
Talk about the Odd Couple.
Even before the Mail’s revelations this week, one might have expected that given his background — especially his enthusiasm for apartheid South Africa — Mosley is the kind of individual most self-respecting socialists would go out of their way to avoid.
Incidentally, this isn’t the first Labour deputy leader Mosley has financed. In 2011, he underwrote John Prescott’s legal action against the News Of The World.
You’d have thought Two Jags had been around long enough to view Mosley’s offer with suspicion, to say the least. Prescott was an up-and-coming Labour activist when Max was making his way in his father’s fascist movement.
But this isn’t about Two Jags, it’s about the artist formerly known as Two Pizzas. He is a muck-raking zealot utterly unfit for high office, yet if Corbyn wins the next election, Tom Watson could become Deputy Prime Minister.
In the extensive roll-call of political hypocrites, Watson is by far the most disgusting.
Even though he now has proof positive about Mosley’s unsavoury history, he is standing by his man.
Decency? Watson doesn’t know the meaning of the word.
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