Tom Watson could hardly have chosen a more unfortunate moment to launch a heart-rending defence of one of his cabal. The Sun has a recording of Watson taking to the stage with comedian Matt Forde to stick up for his close personal friend and staff member Karie Murphy:

“Bizarrely to me, he decided to report my office manager to the police for potential fraud. And I thought, ‘are you f…’ I nearly swore there, ‘are you joking?’ She’s running for selection, she’s not robbing a bank. I felt I had a duty of care so I spent a couple of weeks really drilling down into the detail, and when I did I realised the allegations against my staff member and another member of the party were total bullshit. Her reputation had been totally destroyed. An injustice was done to those people. It’s amazing how my own leader can be so wrong. But he was. It’s hard for me to say this, but Ed just got it wrong on Falkirk. He was given information, or a report, that was inaccurate and omitted some key facts, and took judgements that really harmed the individuals involved in a grotesque way. I suspect privately he is a little bit embarrassed about it.”

Talking of embarrassment, by coincidence today’s Times has some rather awkward Falkirk emails revealing Labour’s dodgy recruitment deal with Unite, written by one Karie Murphy:

“I will personally collect their direct-debit details once we have given them a reason to support the Labour Party. I will do this after the selection process, this is what Lennie [McCluskey] agreed with the Labour Party GS [McNicol]”

“It’s amazing how he can be so wrong…”