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I know of very few British MPs, being a Canadian who watches occasionally British panel shows, but I do hear about Tom Watson fairly frequently and almost alway

• stuaxo 9y ago
  He was handily at Glastonbury during one of the biggest anti-Corbyn plots, that many say he had a hand in.
• crdoconnor 9y ago
  No. He aligns with the deeply unpopular Blairite wing of the party and has spent an awful lot of time and effort trying to undermine Corbyn. This is good though. He should stick to doing stuff like this.
  • beaconstudios 9y ago
    you say that like undermining Corbyn is an objectively bad thing. He's an extremely divisive element of the current Labour party and the primary reason why I (and I consider myself a liberal first and foremost) cannot support the current Labour leadership. Labour's always been a mix of liberals and socialists but in my opinion Corbyn is too far to the latter to ever unify the party behind his ideas.
    • crdoconnor 9y ago
      He's divisive among a lot of the MPs especially the ones who came in under Blair because of his policies. By historical standards they're soft-left but they're to the left of the overton window so he's "extreme". The members, most of whom are disgusted with establishment politics and neoliberal dogma are about 90% behind him though. Enough new members were inspired to join by him that they now have the largest membership of any party in Europe. Anti-establishmentarianisn is only natural given the failure of the status quo to deliver egalitarian growth and freedom. You can have it from mild liberals like him or the far right. Either way the days of the dominant neoliberal era are numbered.
    • vidarh 9y ago
      There are more Labour members supporting Corbyn than there were Labour members total before Corbyn became leader. Labour will never be unified as long as there is first past the post in the UK, and currently at least the left of the party dominates the membership. Any challenger to Corbyn at this point would depend on the support of the left of the party even more than during the last challenge.
      • barrkel 9y ago
        Polarization of the main parties is creating big democratic deficits in UK governance. The Tory party membership is heavily skewed towards Brexit despite it having a razor thin majority in the country; while Labour is heavily skewed towards Marxists, despite Britain being roughly centre-right throughout its modern history, by European standards. As a result, neither parties have natural constituencies in the electorate to deliver a majority right now. And LibDem are a rounding error. And of course Corbyn is completely out of whack with his membership, being pro-Brexit while the party is heavily for Remain. Remain effectively doesn't have democratic representation, and nor does the business-focused middle ground.
        • crdoconnor 9y ago
          The idea that Corbyn or his supporters are all Marxists because they want to nationalize a decrepit subsidized rail system used to suck profits out of commuters is on the batshit extreme end of right wing. This stuff is both extemely popular among Brits and common sense. By historical standards Corbyn is pretty soft left. It's the establishment and London media bubble that have moved into crazy town.
        • phatfish 9y ago
          Sorry, I tune out when anyone mentions Marxism and the current Labour government. Considering their policies are in line with most other center ground European countries it just comes across as repeating Daily Mail taking points. No one is calling Merkel a Marxist yet Germany has free higher education and nationalised rail, and Germany is just one example.
        • vidarh 9y ago
    • Asdfbla 9y ago
      Yet Corbyn's somewhat populist rhetoric seems to have made Labour competitive again, or were their good election results just a coincidence and had nothing to do with Corbyn? Just curious, since I'm not British and probably only have a very superficial understanding of the politics.
      • anon1385 9y ago
        It was almost entirely to do with Corbyn (and the energy brought to the party by his leadership campaigns, in the form of new members and new organisations).
      • notahacker 9y ago
        The election result was likely considerably more influenced by the government unwisely deciding to base their entire election campaign around empty slogans about a Brexit nearly half the population had voted against including most of the typical swing voters, allowing Corbyn to position himself more as the reasonable candidate whose manifesto actually offered tangible promises. The populist rhetoric came before the manifesto, and - along with widespread opposition to it from within his own party - appeared to have the opposite net effect on voters. Besides which, gaining some seats and weakening the government was far better than expected, but not an especially wonderful achievement for a party that had been in power for more of the previous couple of decades than it had been out of it. Corbyn has an adoring fanbase and a massively increased party membership but he also still often finishes behind or level with a PM virtually nobody has a good word to say about in "who would make the best Prime Minister" polls.
        • crdoconnor 9y ago
          >Corbyn to position himself more as the reasonable candidate whose manifesto actually offered tangible promises. This position is largely what the Blairite wing of the party were rebelling against. They wanted to run on a strongly anti-Brexit platform with slightly watered down tory policies. The Lib Dems conveniently demonstrated how deeply unpopular that platform was outside of the London remainer bubble. Getting the largest increase in voting share since the 40s while the whole media savages you (even the independent and guardian were attacking him 6 weeks before the election) and your own MPs try to undermine you at every turn is an impressive achievement. The next election wont have either of those things and will likely feature a landslide.
• matthewmacleod 9y ago
  Tom Watson has agreeable views in a number of areas, but he's unlikely to be a candidate for the leadership any time soon. Quite aside from anything, Corbyn is unfortunately unassailable at the moment.
  • psergeant 9y ago
    I think as it becomes clearer to young people that Corbyn is — at best — lacklustre about repealing Brexit, his assailability will grow
  • mabbo 9y ago
    > Corbyn is unfortunately unassailable at the moment But... Why? I don't have a horse in this race at all, but Corbyn just doesn't seem to be able to win. He seems so uncharismatic. The last election wasn't so much him gaining seats as it was May losing them. With a minority government, May's days are numbered. It feels to me like the time to replace Corbyn is now, before the next election.
    • guiriduro 9y ago
      > I don't have a horse in this race at all Yeah right, you come only to bury caesar. I'll admit my bias, I'm a fan. And I don't think you can write off Corbyn's coming from well behind, daily attacks from all the centre and rightwing press as if he were the antichrist or some antisemitic Stalinist, as well as attacks from the Blairite dead in his own party, to beat all the critics and deprive "strong and stable" May of her majority, leaving her weakly needing to bribe the Northern Irish in order to stay in government. That's no small achievement given the hatchetjobs he's had to overcome. Labour under Corbyn look much more like a government than the Tories, frankly.
      • Silhouette 9y ago
        Labour under Corbyn look much more like a government than the Tories, frankly. But again, how much of that is just because May has been such a disaster? Corbyn's Labour might look like the government-in-waiting by default, but that's partly because they've got very good at either not committing on controversial subjects or having policies that have a very visible upside that they've promoted while they gloss over serious downsides. None of that will be sustainable if they actually form a government.
• wjoe 9y ago
  Watson is one of very few British politicians who seems to care about privacy, surveillance, and internet issues. He was also a big part of the "phone hacking" case against the Murdoch press. It's a shame we don't have more politicans like him. And it's not even a partisan issue - it doesn't surprise me that the Conservatives want to bring in more surveillance and internet laws, but even their biggest opponents on the left rarely oppose it. >is this guy eventually going to replace Corbyn? Not likely. He seems more of a background figure who does best focusing on the issues he cares about, and not so much of a leadership type. He's also more in the 'centre ground' of British politics, and has been quite critical of Corbyn over the past few years. It's likely that the next Labour leader would be someone with similar views to Corbyn.
  • treerock 9y ago
    > He seems more of a background figure who does best focusing on the issues he cares about, and not so much of a leadership type. He's Labour's Deputy Leader.
• dalbasal 9y ago
  Probably not soon anyway as he's associated with the old, non-corbyn faction of the party which seems to be in disfavour ATM. Though... he does currently have a shadow secretary position. In theory that makes him a ministerial candidate and that (also in theory) puts him in position to create labour's policy on such topics. Writing the cheques from government is always different to being in opposition or even a disident backbencher. But you're right. He does seems to have an understanding of these issues, and guts.
• gadders 9y ago
  On the debit side, he also pushed the Westminster Paedophile Ring stories that proved to have no basis in reality: http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/tom-watson-the-unacceptable-face-of-the-paedo-panic/17535#.WnB5yPBl9pg http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/tom-watson-the-...
• mcjiggerlog 9y ago
  By the way, that's not actually Tom Watson in those videos...
• confounded 9y ago
  Do bear in mind that he voted for bringing the Investigatory Powers Act in to law. He's a career politician. He'll be very pleased to be in the Guardian today.