YESTERDAY morning, Labour’s deputy leader and leading right winger Tom Watson announced that he was quitting his post and would be standing down as an MP at the general election.
In his resignation letter to Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, Watson was at pains to insist that this decision was ‘personal, not political’.
This was followed up by Watson on Twitter, where he emphasised his commitment to the Labour Party writing: ‘I’m as committed to Labour as ever. I will spend this election fighting for brilliant Labour candidates and a better future for our country.’
In fact, Watson has spent the past years inside the Labour Party plotting and leading the campaign to oust Corbyn from the leadership and split the party from top to bottom.
Watson showed his contempt for both the millions of workers who voted to Leave in the 2016 referendum and contempt for official Labour Party policy when he demanded in September that Labour tear up its election manifesto and become the party of Remain.
For his treacherous behaviour, numerous calls for his resignation were made, including one from Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott.
At the last Labour Party conference, Watson only survived a motion abolishing the deputy secretary post when Corbyn personally intervened to get it pulled at the last moment as part of his futile policy of appeasing the right wing to keep them on-board.
Watson has now left the parliamentary scene but you can be sure he will be doing all he can to promote ‘brilliant Labour candidates’ dedicated to dumping Corbyn, carry on splitting the Labour Party and forcing it to become the party of Remain.
Other right wingers fled the Labour Party earlier hiding behind the lying accusations of anti-Semitism as they sought new homes as ‘independent’ MPs, before most joined the LibDems in search of safe seats.
On the day that Watson slunk off, former leading Labour MPs lined up to proclaim that they would be voting for Boris Johnson’s Tory Party rather than a Corbyn-led Labour Party.
Ian Austin, a former Labour minister who left Labour in February, urged ‘decent, traditional voters’ to back Boris Johnson claiming that ‘Jeremy Corbyn is totally unfit to lead this country’.
John Woodcock, who was suspended by the party and then resigned to sit as an independent, said he would vote Tory to ‘keep Jeremy Corbyn away from Downing Street’.
These two ex-Labour MPs are openly calling for a Tory vote, but behind them stand the right wing Labourites who have split the party down the middle. The depth of Labour’s crisis was demonstrated when over half of Labour MPs defied Corbyn’s instructions to vote for a general election and either abstained or voted against.
Watson may have gone but these other vipers still remain firmly in the nest with speculation in Westminster that his resignation could be followed by the resignation of other right wingers in a co-ordinated attempt to undermine Corbyn and prevent any Labour victory at the election.
As the Workers Revolutionary Party election manifesto (published in the News Line on Tuesday 5th November) states:
‘Labour Party members, constituency parties and the trade unions must now take a hand. They must demand that those who abstained or voted against be expelled from the Labour Party. They must demand that these MPs be replaced by new candidates who must support leaving the EU, and be opposed to any second referendum.’
These right wingers like Watson, despite his protestations of loyalty, do not support Labour or the millions of workers who voted to Leave in the referendum. Their loyalty is to British capitalism and to remaining in the bosses’ and bankers’ EU and they are prepared to destroy the Labour Party and lose the general election to achieve this.
The right wing must not be allowed to resign when they wish or stay to plot against the working class. They must be driven out.
What is absolutely clear is that only by Labour adopting socialist policies of expropriating the bosses and bankers and advancing to socialism can Labour achieve a victory on December 12th.
