2018 predictions of centrist ‘government of national unity’ plan coming true as Labour deputy leader says he would serve in one – but the comments and their context are grounds for expulsion under Labour rules
Comment
Last summer the SKWAWKBOX warned readers that a ‘government of national unity’ was on the agenda of so-called ‘centrists’ as part of their plan to prevent a Corbyn-led Labour government. Then Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson told TV cameras that he thought Labour’s job was to prevent the fall of the Tory government:
Now Watson has explicitly said that he would serve in a so-called ‘government of national unity’ – amid reports that Watson has been approached by ‘pro-EU Conservatives’ about the prospect.
Watson told Prospect magazine:
I prefer Labour governments… [but] if needs must, we have to do what’s right.
“Prefer” Labour governments? Hundreds of thousands of people are dying needlessly under Tory policies and millions are suffering poverty, deprivation and marginalisation. But Watson only ‘prefers’ Labour governments – and would work with some of the same Tories who have helped inflict that suffering.
Watson denied that Tories had approached him about the idea – but the mere positive mention of such a collaboration puts him in breach of a Labour Party rule that bans any kind of support for a rival party or political organisation.
Clause one of chapter two of Labour’s rules, which addresses conditions of membership, states:
A member of the Party who joins and/or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the Party… shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a Party member
Watson has already flirted with this rule by his supportive attitude toward the quitter group of MPs, including meeting their advisers – and will be on even thinner ice now that they have announced their application to become a political party.
But his expressed willingness to work with Tories and MPs of other parties – at a time when the Tory government is in a state of collapse and broad consensus on the need for a general election is intolerable – and a breach of that chapter two rule, with bringing the party into disrepute thrown in for good measure.
Watson’s general behaviour recently has been just as intolerable – but he has now directly ruled himself out of membership of the party, let alone holding elected office within it or representing it in Parliament.
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Nothing will happen
True, he is a Zionist and only anti-Zionists get suspended or expelled.
Absolutely nothing will happen.
Everyone here knows that Watson could claim Corbyn held the pig for Cameron, and still nothing would be done…
People need to try and help the Palestinian people. .They are being butcherd !! If we don t say something who does? All people see or hear is Bbc or CNN ,l Try and live their life ,even think about their day today living.No doctors , no medicine Your kids are sick what do you do???? Then you protest, But they shoot your Children. The world just watches because America says its ok.. And we allow it. Shame on us.
There is a new ‘world order’ developing in in the Middle East
From Taboo to Cooperation: Israel’s Changing Relations with the Arab World https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2019/03/29/from-taboo-to-cooperation-israels-changing-relations-with-the-arab-world/
Watson doesn’t think that bringing the government down is a better way to get a better deal !?
Frank Field got away with providing the Tories with a fig-leaf for years.
“Watson denied that [he’d spoken to] Tories” did you mean?
Yep, too many of Bliar’s blockers is right. Too low-born to be real Tories but so yearning for acceptance and gongs they hang on to the national tit like new-borns with teeth.
Blairism was always destined to become the re-incarnation of Ramsay Mac’s treachery. And Brexit is the same sort of crisis-in which hard choices need to be made- that existed in 1931. The natural tendency of Blairites, when asked to choose, is to return to the comfort of the Toryism that they regard as inevitable and natural.
“We are all in this together, there is no time for partisan squabbling” they will tell us adding “so the poor must suffer more.”
The basis of capitalism is the doctrine that the poor need to be starved in order to make them work while the rich will only bother to do anything if flattered and bathed in luxury.
Mandelson forgot to tell us that not only were he and Tony “Intensely relaxed” about the enormous wealth of the few but that they were even more reconciled to the poverty and misery of the many. And these are people who don’t even hold out, to the humble, the consolation of eternal life in Paradise.
I’ve been expecting a National Coalition for the past twenty years. Labour needs to get its act together and reclaim the energies of the Williamsons, Livingstones, Wadsworths, Winstanleys and Walkers and bid goodbye to half of the PLP.
I loathe Watson and have known about his shenanigans since his beginnings as ambitious young creep at Walworth Road. But he won’t do a thing. He just likes to keep in the news. Best thing to do is ignore him. He hates that.
Watson is occupying an important position in the Labour Party and doing his damndest to undermine Corbyn. He CANNOT be ignored, he must be removed.
You are right in essence. But poetrymuseum has a good point – he was elected by proper process – that’s the way to stuff him. Meanwhile a bit of blunt rebuttal and ignoring him are the best strategies.
How the hell can anyone “ignore him” when everytime he opens his gob, the media are there with a camera and a mike? You going to tell everybody in the country to switch off their tv’s when the news comes on?
Yes, turn it off. Don’t watch it. At least not as a source of impartial info about what is happening in the country or the world.
It is not “the news”; it’s establishment propaganda, psychological warfare on the poor and the left. Think of all that never ending crap last year and thus about Corbyn being a communist, racist etc as bayseum.
The actual news is on this, and other similar, New Left Media sites publicised via social media.
You’re not doing yourself any favours by using any of the main stream. Ignoring the government owned BBC (government propaganda machine), the rest is essentially owned by a few billionaires. You’re hearing what they tell you.
Swiss propaganda research UK/US media map
https://swprs.org/media-navigator/
(@Skwawkbox, not being on the list isn’t necessarily a bad thing)
Also, that the media essentially get their news from three agencies (AP, Reuters and AFP) and then spin to their ideals should cause you concern.
The true journalist is a very rare species today.
Someone tell him, he joined the wrong party. Just wondering if he’ll get suspended and expelled……
And, Skawky, you still think we will have a snap GE soon? I don’t think so. The +-120 strong right-wing PLP faction – led by TW – isn’t going to voluntarily step out of the gravy train.
you just know he’s goading, he’ll soon start on the “is it cos i is LFI bruv? this is antisemitism” kick him out!
Why not report his comments to Labour’s Complaints Department with a request that he be investigated and his membership suspended while the investigation is taking place?
One problem might be just who would replace him?
A solution might be for a CLP motion to APC, calling for the position of Deputy Leader to be abolished?
There has to be a national campaign to redress the gender imbalance that has existed between the Labour Party Leader and the Labour party Deputy leader since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as our Leader.
Watson should have been removed from the position he holds purely and simply on Gender Equality criteria and an election taken place with only Female contenders. If there is a will to do this then the membership should be given a vote asap.
If I was a Labour MP I would stand again this in my opinion Bourgeois Barbarian!
Should you have to be Labour MP to be Labour Deputy?
Our diverse working class is being hammered by the Tory Neo-Liberal Barbarians so perhaps the grassroots Left Wing Democratic Socialists are ready to ditch the internal Neo-Liberal Grovellers and the external Neo-Liberal legal capitalist thieves.
Diverse working people of the World Unite!
It would mean a coup by the Labour Right by the Blairites. Mason has got it right https://www.paulmason.org/national-unity-government-no-thanks/. Watson if he persists with this must be expelled.