The favourite to become Labour’s next deputy leader talks of his three resignations, the social media campaign and reinventing the party

“She didn’t really think we should microchip all immigrants; what she was trying to say was that the system isn’t working,” insists Tom Watson, Labour MP for West Bromwich East and the bookies’ favourite to be the next deputy leader of the Labour party.

In the Dagenham Trades Hall working men’s club, Watson had just spent 30 minutes talking to a small group of former Labour supporters who voted for Ukip in the general election.

Bernadette, 73, who worked for the council helping surveyors with their administration until her retirement, had described herself as outspoken early on – and she didn’t disappoint. “When you get a pet, you microchip them,” she said to Watson, leaning across the table, “Can’t we microchip the immigrants? We have got to stop them coming in, those wrong ones.”

Luckily for Watson, the conversation moved on and the policy proposal dissipated from the room as swiftly as it had been emitted. But others around the table were emboldened. “Labour is anti-English,” said a man in his 50s. “We are forced into being racist,” added another in his late 30s.

Earlier on Friday morning, Watson, freshly shortlisted along with Caroline Flint, Stella Creasy, Angela Eagle and Ben Bradshaw, had launched his bid to be deputy leader. “Of the 50 seats where Ukip made its biggest gains, 32 of them were Labour,” he told a supportive audience of activists in Dagenham. “Of course we need to win back Labour supporters who voted Tory in May , but if we are to win we also have to understand why so many Labour supporters voted Ukip.”

The manner in which Watson would take on this emerging threat is indicative of how he says he would tackle the role, and the man that he is. As befits the politician who was Britain’s first minister for digital engagement, he has a smattering of interesting policy suggestions – a veto on the free movement of labour from new entrants to the EU and devolution of powers to local communities to ensure that money follows where immigrants settle and public services can respond to pressures accordingly – but Watson, an affable character, is all about building bonds, tying people into the party so they might feel able to renew their allegiances to Labour.

“We are never going to win any of them back with a successful performance at the dispatch box or speech to Labour party members,” he said. “I want to return the Labour party to where it has come from, which is being the roots in a community. That means we need to rely more on our members on the ground and our representatives in local government. They are the ones who will win them back.”

Watson’s tribalism – his clear enjoyment of being around Labour people, his experience in organisation due to his time working in the unions and his belief that those who have left can be brought back into the fold – is arguably both his biggest strength and weakness.

These days he is quick to praise Tony Blair. “I have been trying to work out what our single sentence offer at the next election might be and for me it is something like: ‘To be a successful country we want to live in a more entrepreneurial, fairer and kinder Britain.’ With Tony Blair’s leadership, and Gordon Brown as his shadow chancellor in 1994 to 1997, people understood that we stood for economic efficiency and social justice. That was the axle of the Labour years that kept the show on the road, so we have to get back to that. I really admire what he [Blair] did.”

But others in the party remember his role in burying the Caesar whom he praises today. In September 2006, with the war in Iraq poisoning Blair’s reputation, Watson, then of the Brownite tribe, resigned as defence minister along with other junior figures and published an open letter demanding the prime minister’s resignation. Blairites claimed the letter was part of a plot orchestrated by supporters of Brown, whom Watson had visited the day before the letter was published. Blair subsequently announced that he would step down within a year.

Does he now regret his role? “It is rather pointless me trying to say whether I regret it or not, as it’s done. I do think we need to move on from it.”

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Watson’s resignation from the Blair government then was just the first (“Look, let me assure you, if I do this job I am there for good,” he says when asked about his three walkouts).

His second resignation, as digital minister, was in 2009 as his marriage fell apart during “a very difficult time as a result of my relationship with the Murdoch press”, a period that later saw him throw himself into the phone-hacking scandal with extraordinary results, from the closure of the News of the World to the jailing of its editor.

His third resignation, from being Ed Miliband’s general election campaign co-ordinator, was in July 2013 when the party was gripped by claims that the choice for the parliamentary candidate for Falkirk had been fixed by the Unite union in favour of Watson’s one-time office manager, Karie Murphy. Watson was not implicated, but he suggests that he felt he had lost Miliband’s trust. “For me, when I finished the election job in 2013, it was the right thing to go because he wanted a team around him he had confidence in. If I am being honest, he had more confidence in Douglas Alexander to do that than me. No hard feelings about that. You have to make yourself useful in politics.”

But in Watson’s resignation letter there was also mention of some in the party having not forgiven him for his resignation in 2006. How can he do this big job now? His response is one part hope that Labour will recognise the benefits it will accrue from his undeniable qualities, but in equal measure there is an apparent admission that at 48 years old his politics have matured. He throws in a defence of the rightwing leadership candidate, Liz Kendall, for good luck.

“Well, you know, when John Prescott took over he had run against Roy Hattersley twice before and lost and the party forgave him,” Watson said. “So there will always be tensions in a political party, particularly one as democratic as the Labour party. There are always going to be people who row.

“I think now I self-identify as middle-aged. I am certainly more reflective, and I think a more generous person. And what you understand about political parties is that unless you have a culture that rewards intellectual curiosity you lose the essence of a political party.

“What worries me about this leadership debate is that it is already too personalised. Everybody’s view should be valid in this debate. I don’t agree with Liz Kendall on all the things she is saying, but I admire her for saying them and I think she is courageous in some of the positions she is advancing. But the way she is treated in social media is totally unacceptable. People dismiss her because she is Liz Kendall.”

Watson is one of the more remarkable parliamentarians of recent years. On top of his efforts over phone hacking, he has been relentless in seeking to highlight claims of an establishment paedophile ring, which will now be examined by a judge-led public inquiry. Those efforts, he said, were sparked by a single email from a concerned former child protection manager desperate for someone to listen. Some MPs who have since joined his campaign were prompted by personal experience, but was he ever groomed or abused?

He avoids the question – and offers a reason for Labour members to tick his name for deputy: “It isn’t about me. It could be yes or no, that answer, and it still wouldn’t be about me. It’s about other people.”

The Watson CV

January 1967 Born in Sheffield, later attended Hull University where he was NUS president.

1994-1997 Worked in Labour’s Millbank HQ before becoming national political officer of the AEEU trade union.

2001 Elected MP for West Bromwich East.

2004 Appointed as an assistant government whip under Blair.

May 2006 Promoted to parliamentary under-secretary of state at Ministry of Defence.

September 2006 Signed a letter to Tony Blair urging the prime minister to step down. Resigned as minister. and released a further statement calling on Blair to resign.

2008 Minister for digital engagement under Gordon Brown.

2009 Resigned as digital minister as his marriage came under pressure. In 2011 he compared NoW chairman James Murdoch to a mafia boss, under questioning about phone hacking.

October 2011 Promoted to deputy chair of the Labour party running Labour’s elections and campaigns.

2012 suggested in the Commons that an establishment paedophile network may have existed in the past sparking police investigations and leading to a judge-led inquiry.

July 2013 Resigned as Ed Miliband’s general election coordinator after Falkirk candidate selection row.