2018 predictions of centrist ‘government of national unity’ plan coming true as Labour deputy leader says he would serve in one – but the comments and their context are grounds for expulsion under Labour rules

Tom Watson last summer telling Sky News he thought his job was to prevent the Tories’ fall

Comment

Last summer the SKWAWKBOX warned readers that a ‘government of national unity’ was on the agenda of so-called ‘centrists’ as part of their plan to prevent a Corbyn-led Labour government. Then Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson told TV cameras that he thought Labour’s job was to prevent the fall of the Tory government:

Now Watson has explicitly said that he would serve in a so-called ‘government of national unity’ – amid reports that Watson has been approached by ‘pro-EU Conservatives’ about the prospect.

Watson told Prospect magazine:

I prefer Labour governments… [but] if needs must, we have to do what’s right.

“Prefer” Labour governments? Hundreds of thousands of people are dying needlessly under Tory policies and millions are suffering poverty, deprivation and marginalisation. But Watson only ‘prefers’ Labour governments – and would work with some of the same Tories who have helped inflict that suffering.

Watson denied that Tories had approached him about the idea – but the mere positive mention of such a collaboration puts him in breach of a Labour Party rule that bans any kind of support for a rival party or political organisation.

Clause one of chapter two of Labour’s rules, which addresses conditions of membership, states:

A member of the Party who joins and/or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the Party… shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a Party member

Watson has already flirted with this rule by his supportive attitude toward the quitter group of MPs, including meeting their advisers – and will be on even thinner ice now that they have announced their application to become a political party.

But his expressed willingness to work with Tories and MPs of other parties – at a time when the Tory government is in a state of collapse and broad consensus on the need for a general election is intolerable – and a breach of that chapter two rule, with bringing the party into disrepute thrown in for good measure.

Watson’s general behaviour recently has been just as intolerable – but he has now directly ruled himself out of membership of the party, let alone holding elected office within it or representing it in Parliament.

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