At the Commons debate on anti-Semitism, Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson pointedly moved away from Comrade Corbyn on the front bench to sit next to Labour MPs Ruth Smeeth and Luciana Berger, whose emotional descriptions of the abuse they’ve been subjected to by Corbyn supporters for being Jewish triggered a rare standing ovation.
This is the same Tom Watson who has taken £500,000 from motor sport tycoon Max Mosley.
He deserves credit for his dramatic gesture in the debate, but shouldn’t he follow this up by handing that money back?
At the Commons debate on anti-Semitism, Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson (pictured) pointedly moved away from Comrade Corbyn on the front bench
After all, Max Mosley’s racist past was comprehensively exposed in February by the Daily Mail. The former racing tycoon attended and was caught brawling at a ‘Jew-baiting’ rally in East London in 1962 where his father, Sir Oswald Mosley, the founder of the fascist Union Movement who once talked of ‘the stink of the Jew’, was speaking.
And if Watson is tempted to try to score political points for Labour over the Windrush scandal, he’d do well to remember that in 1961 Mosley published a by-election campaign leaflet backing a candidate for his father’s Union Movement which said: ‘Coloured immigration threatens your children’s health.’
Mosley refused to apologise for the leaflet which was published just as the Windrush generation — by 1961 there were an estimated 172,000 West Indian-born people living in the UK — were finding their feet here.
Again, shouldn’t Watson give the money back?
This is the same Tom Watson who has taken £500,000 from motor sport tycoon Max Mosley (pictured). He deserves credit for his dramatic gesture in the debate, but shouldn’t he follow this up by handing that money back?
Amber in deep again
It’s not just her woeful response to the Windrush scandal that’s causing trouble for Home Secretary Amber Rudd. In her Hastings and Rye constituency there was a protest by a huge flotilla of fishermen about the EU still having rights to the UK’s fishing waters in the Brexit transition.
The fishermen made a statement saying: ‘. . . we have waited and hoped for 20 years to escape [the Common Fisheries Policy] and the industry must mobilise to show politicians we won’t be sacrificed without a fight.’
It’s a fight Rudd might lose — her majority is only 346.
It’s not just her woeful response to the Windrush scandal that’s causing trouble for Home Secretary Amber Rudd (pictured)
A headline on internet blog LibDem Voice about the Upper House’s vote to remain in the EU customs union says: ‘Lords wins are essential to democratic process.’ What’s democratic about unelected peers overturning the wishes of the elected Commons, not to mention those of the 17.4 million who voted to Leave?
Castaway Hodge
On Pienaar’s Politics on BBC Radio 5 Live, Labour’s Dame Margaret Hodge was asked who would she prefer to be marooned with on a desert island — Diane Abbott or Theresa May. She replied she would prefer to be alone, hardly a resounding show of support for the shadow home secretary.
After he was suspended by the Labour Party in October for racist and homophobic tweets, the MP Jared O’Mara stayed away from Westminster for months. The subject of an internal Labour inquiry, O’Mara finally returned in January and has been voting with Labour ever since.
Next month sees the first anniversary of his victory in Sheffield Hallam in the 2017 General Election — yet he’s still not made his maiden speech nor asked a single question in the Commons chamber. I never thought I’d say this, but the MP he ousted — one Nick Clegg, the former Lib Dem leader — was better value for money.
Next month sees the first anniversary of Jared O’Mara’s (pictured) victory in Sheffield Hallam in the 2017 General Election — yet he’s still not made his maiden speech nor asked a single question in the Commons chamber
Corbyn and the gapes of wrath
When senior Labour MP Mike Gapes was challenged on social media about his attacks on Comrade Corbyn over the Labour leader’s disastrous response to the Salisbury poisoning and the Syrian bombing raid, he had a succinct response. Referring to four past leaders of the party, he said: ‘I will be as loyal to Corbyn as he was to Foot, Kinnock, Blair and Brown.’ In other words, relentlessly disloyal.