Candidate for Labour’s deputy leadership says contest to lead the party has been overdramatised and all four candidates have a lot in common

Tom Watson, the frontrunner to be the next Labour deputy leader, says he is “very relaxed” about the idea of serving under Jeremy Corbyn, who is “not a Trotskyist”.

In an interview with the Guardian, the West Bromwich MP argued the contest had been overdramatised, and said all four leadership candidates had more in common than their portrayal in the heat of debate.



“Liz Kendall is not a Tory and Jeremy Corbyn is not a Trotskyist,” he said. “This language of morons and viruses is totally unhelpful. What they have in common is that they want a more socially just country and they don’t want enshrined privilege. They all four of them don’t want a Tory government.”



I certainly don’t want to be leader of the Labour party Tom Watson

The senior Labour MP played down alarmist warnings from the Blairite wing of the party about a Corbyn leadership and urged the parliamentary party to accept whoever the membership chose on 12 September.

He added that Labour members did not like being told who not to vote for and called on the parliamentary party to see the leadership contest as exciting, rather than being frightened of debate.

Watson said it was “yet to be determined” if the party would ultimately end up splitting in the event of a Corbyn victory, but one of the jobs of a new deputy leader would be to help unite the shadow cabinet and backbenchers in an effort to stop this happening.



He said all four candidates were “very, very able, very courageous people, very strong with ideas, representing all the strands of thought in the party”.

He added: “This election for the very first time is a members-led election. Some people would like to portray that as chaotic or in negative terms but I think it’s the start of the fightback.

“The thing members are disappointed about is all the mudslinging. They want the frontbench to use their energy to critique the Tories. But, in general, members are excited about what’s on and full of ideas and the big debate that’s going on.”

Watson is the current favourite to win the deputy leadership. In July YouGov said he looked unstoppable after its poll put his support at 42% and well ahead of all the other candidates: Stella Creasy, Angela Eagle, Caroline Flint and Ben Bradshaw. However, a recent LabourList poll said Creasy had overtaken him.

The surge in members and supporters to 600,000 since the YouGov poll was carried out makes the result much more difficult to predict. Some in particular have suggested that the likelihood of a Corbyn victory in the leadership could boost the chances of female deputy candidates if members are keen on gender balance.

Perhaps surprisingly, Watson is having to share the recommendation of the Unite trade union with Eagle. He is a former flatmate of the Unite general secretary, Len McCluskey, and resigned as Labour’s election coordinator over the Falkirk selection row involving the trade union.

Within the party, Watson has a reputation as a formidable organiser and ruthless political operator, although he said he did not recognise this characterisation of himself. Some of the other deputy leadership campaign teams have noted, with a hint of resentment, that he has been working behind the scenes on winning over local parties for years in anticipation of this contest.

Some commentators have argued that Watson’s experience and deep Labour connections mean he could end up as a key power behind the throne if Corbyn does become leader. John McTernan, the former adviser to Blair, has even posited a theory that he would be well placed to “neutralise” the new leader and then “save” the party if a Corbyn tenure did not work out.



However, Watson said a prerequisite for wanting to be deputy leader was not wanting the top job. “I certainly don’t want to be leader of the Labour party; I want to reform how the Labour party campaigns and my job will be to support the leader whoever the membership decides that may be,” he said.

Despite his conciliatory tone towards Corbyn, Watson appears to hold some policy positions that could sit uneasily with the leftwinger. While Corbyn would like to withdraw from Nato, Watson said shortly after the election that he would like military spending to be maintained to make sure Britain meets the Nato 2% defence spending target.



Asked what would happen if a new leader tried to change policy to support Nato withdrawal, he said: “There’s always been in the history of the Labour party individuals who take different positions. What I think we need is a more robust mechanism in which the party makes policy.”

This needs to include using digital tools to consult members and get them to contribute ideas, he said.

Regardless of who wins, Watson said there would have to be changes in the way MPs and particularly the frontbench operated in future, as there appear to be bigger gulfs than for many years between the parliamentary party, councillors and grassroots activists.

Watson said ordinary party members would also expect their frontbench to be freed from the “tyranny” of reading out prepared lines and to stop talking in “special adviser speak”.

He added: “Repeating phrases in rote-learned fashion does not work any more. They expect our next frontbench team to be far more robust, more campaign-focused, much clearer about what we stand for and much tougher when it comes to what the government is trying to bring in.”

He said he would be open to a return of shadow cabinet elections if the new leader thought it was right. “The first act I think should be to find out whether the parliamentary party wants to do that,” he said.

If the party does, as the bookmakers suggest is likely, elect two men as their leader and deputy, Watson said the national executive committee could consider appointing another female deputy as well.



Watson said he thought he was no longer most associated by people with the last Labour administration, despite having had a role in ousting Tony Blair in 2007. He claimed that when people stopped him in the street, they most often mentioned his campaigning against phone hacking, his quest to uncover child abuse and his passion for music.