A bad day for Tom Watson, as his role in Labour’s current woes emerges. Guido has been saying it for weeks. As the Telegraph points out this morning: “If Ed Miliband wants to become prime minister in 2015 he needs to sack Tom Watson.” They lift the lid on how toxic the Mafia-man works behind the scenes. When he takes time out of tweeting pictures from Glasto, that is:

“Part of Tom Watson’s problem is that he is a man in the right place at the wrong time – an old-school Brownite machine politician in an era when the political machines are grinding to a halt. “I was in the room at the first meeting Tom had with us after being appointed campaign coordinator,” says one party insider. “His first words were, ‘You’ve got to understand, I know more about political campaigning than any of you’. You just can’t do that. No one’s impressed by that talk any more.” Which isn’t strictly true. Ed Miliband was impressed by it, which is why Watson was given carte blanche to expand his influence over selections, campaigns and broader political strategy.”

The BBC’s James Purnell put it, Watson is a “cancer at the heart of the Labour Party”. As Rachel Sylvester says in the Times, Miliband “must prove that he is strong enough to stand up to the macho politics of fixing and back-room deals. The world has moved on. Labour must adapt too — or it will die.” A good start would be for Ed to release the full Labour inquiry into what went on in Falkirk. If Watson will let him…