Over 60 Labour MPs and 30 peers including deputy leader Tom Watson have issued a statement calling for Jeremy Corbyn to remove the whip from Chris Williamson “immediately”. Despite a highly irregular Labour NEC panel overturning his suspension as a member of the Labour Party, it is still up to Corbyn whether he retains the Labour whip in Parliament. Will Corbyn act? Will the MPs act if he doesn’t?
At least they’re taking it more seriously than Lincoln MP Karen Lee who wrote that she was “absolutely chuffed to bits” with the news Williamson had been reinstated in a now deleted Facebook post. You couldn’t make it up:
UPDATE: Now over 70 Labour Party staffers have written to General Secretary Jennie Formby to protest Williamson’s reinstatement. They have called for an immediate review and the implementation of a “truly independent complaints process”.
Read both letters in full below:
Tom Watson has been making a full-throated case for remaining in the EU this morning at the sycophantic pro-EU think tank Centre for European Reform. Guido couldn’t help but remember this memorable clash between Watson and Alastair Campbell just last May. Watson tears into Bad Al for not respecting the Brexit vote and repeatedly mocks the fact he no longer decides Labour policy:
“We have to listen to the whole of the British people on this Alastair and we’ve got to make sure that we honour them by saying we’re coming out of the EU…”
“What I’m saying is: you no longer decide Labour Party policy… I know you’d like to, I know they don’t pay you a lot of money as the editor of the New European…”
Campbell might have been unceremoniously shown the exit door from Labour, its Deputy Leader doesn’t seem to mind him setting the agenda again…
Tom Watson has become the latest IMPRESS cheerleader to lose out at the hands of the Max Mosley-backed press regulator, after Peter Jukes’ tinfoil-hat outfit Byline got slapped with a £2,500 fine for defamation. Watson himself received a spanking £500,000 from former fascist and IMPRESS funder Mosley during his campaign against the free press…
Watson accused Skwawkbox of breaching IMPRESS’s ‘Harassment and Privacy Clause’ over an article that published his office mobile number online. Sadly for Watson, his pet press regulator didn’t agree, although they did advise Skwawkbox to be “more straightforward about the meaning of sarcastic language when responding to complaints in the future”. Such ingratitude from IMPRESS after all Watson’s done for them…
Guido readers may remember George McManus, the Momentum-backed member of Labour’s National Policy Forum, who was suspended by the Labour Party for this Facebook post about Tom Watson’s “Jewish donors” last year:
Not only did Labour reinstate McManus after just eight weeks, they’ve actually made him a local election candidate and a Labour spokesman in the East Riding of Yorkshire. Makes a mockery of Labour’s claims to be taking its anti-Semitism problem seriously…
Tom Watson on Theresa May’s merits…
“I think she is driven by public duty and of the highest integrity. She’s just a lousy deal maker.“
Tom Watson freestyling on Marr as he backs a second referendum “under all circumstances” and says it’s “inconceivable” that it won’t be in Labour’s next manifesto. Guido wants whatever Watson’s had for breakfast if it’s genuinely made him believe that a second referendum is the “only way we can bring the country back together”…
