Tom Watson’s status as a campaigning MP against Rupert Murdoch has long been the mainstay of his credibility – he’s even written a book about it, Dial M for Murdoch. The cracks appeared in that edifice last week when he chose to continue to stand behind Gerard Coyne even when Coyne took to the Murdoch-owned The Sun to smear his Unite rival Len McCluskey.
Those cracks now look like widening rapidly as further connections to Murdoch, in which Watson opted to accept or ignore Murdoch links in key allies and staff, come to light.
The Comms Chief
Watson’s director of communications, James Robinson, is a former media editor at the Guardian. At first glance, he would appear a good match for Watson’s anti-Murdoch persona – his index page on the Guardian website reveals a string of pieces on the involvement of the Murdoch press in the phone-hacking scandal, of which these are just a few:
In fact, Murdoch/Leveson articles are so prominent in Robinson’s Guardian profile that it would probably not be stretching the point to say he made his journalistic name on them.
Robinson left the Guardian, however, to become a senior public relations consultant with a firm that was, according to the press, involved in controversy over tax-avoidance schemes used celebrities. He then left that firm to join Watson’s team in time for Watson’s deputy leadership campaign and remains with him.
Most pertinently, Robinson is married to well-known Progress MP Gloria de Piero, who last year caused controversy by writing a piece calling on readers of Murdoch publication The Sun to join the Labour Party in order to vote against Jeremy Corbyn in the second leadership election:
As his director of communications role involves heading up Watson’s press relations, it’s possible that Robinson played a role in arranging his wife’s Sun article. With his journalistic experience, writing a newspaper article would pose no problem for him; his wife had no such experience but seemed to manage well enough for her Murdoch initiation.
Either way, it cannot have escaped Watson’s attention – yet Robinson remains his comms chief and was last week seen meeting a key staffer to Unite challenger Gerard Coyne only days after Coyne’s The Sun article was published, further compounding Watson’s links to the media empire.
The right-hand man
That’s not the end of the tracery of Watson’s connections to the Murdoch empire. Watson’s right-hand man is right-wing Labour MP Michael Dugher, whom Watson appointed to head the inquiry into fake news that looks likely to ignore the UK’s primary fake news source, the mainstream media:
Small wonder that Dugher’s focus looks unlikely to be on mainstream publications as a source of fake news, as he writes for some of them – including the right-wing Daily Mail and, you’ve guessed it, The Sun:
The two men are extremely close, personally as well as politically. They are even godparents to each other’s children.
Dugher’s publication in the Murdoch rag took place a year before his appointment by Watson to head the inquiry, so it’s not as if Watson wouldn’t have been aware of it. Yet he proceeded anyway.
A senior Labour source commented to the SKWAWKBOX:
This blows a hole in Tom’s credentials. How can he call himself an anti-Murdoch crusader when so many of his mates write for The Sun?
After what Rupert Murdoch’s Press did to Gordon Brown’s son, these MPs should be ashamed to call themselves Brownites.
Watson made most of what’s positive about his reputation on the back of his opposition to Rupert Murdoch. But his indirect links to the media baron make it look considerably less burnished than it used to.
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The plot thickens. The more I learn about Watson the less I like him.
I followed Watson`s actions when Jeremy Corbyn was leader and in some newspaper photographs Watson just couldn`t hide his jealous hatred of Corbyn after Jeremy won as Leader a second time., then hung all over him at other times whilst all the time working against Corbyn with his 50,000 pieces of silver he was funded by israeli friends. I never will trust that little ferret.
Reblogged this on sdbast.
Reblogged this on MAL's MURMURINGS.
The Guardian is basically a New Scotland Yard puff piece. Check out up coming links to Mr Watson and the Daniel Morgan murder cover up.
The creature from the black lagoon.
Starring T WATSON AS THE CREATURE, M DUGHER AS HIS DOUBLE AGENT, ALONG WITH J ROBINSON HIS GO-BETWEEN!
ALONG WITH HIS WIFE, WHO GETS TO KNOW WHAT THE CREATURE HAS PLANNED before LABOUR GET TO KNOW!
HE JUST WON’T SEE THE KNIFE, BEFORE IT’S TO LATE!
END OF HIS CAREER AND LIFE AS HE KNOWS IT!
SUCH A SAD ENDING, I THINK NOT!
Reblogged this on Britain Isn't Eating.
Twaddle Corbyn wrote a article in the sun last year, Ken livungstone had a column in the sun the whole of the 90’s