Express & Star comment: We stand by Tom Watson on Labour Party crisis
Despite shedding more than a few pounds of late, Tom Watson is big enough to see off those who would seek to oust him from his position as deputy leader of the Labour Party.
It is indicative of the level of these people that they should use Twitter, a transient echo chamber of tosh, to try and whip up a storm against a Black Country MP.
The infantile glee with which they attempted this pointless exercise betrays the inmaturity of sections of the Labour Party that have come to see Jeremy Corbyn as an almost untouchable cult leader.
It is telling that support for such a piffling parade of political pygmies came not from respected voices but from that hoary old charlatan George Galloway.
Black Country voters are not so easily fooled by the metropolitan Momentum mob.
They are much more likely to take note of fellow Labour MPs Ian Austin and John Spellar.
While Mr Austin, another victim of an outrageous smear campaign from sections of his own party, battles on to bring some sense to the anti-Semitism row engulfing Labour, Mr Spellar, another parliamentary veteran, summed things up with regard to Tom Watson by saying, quite simply, he is: “Labour through and through.”
In fact, Mr Watson and Mr Austin have probably been fighting for the Labour cause longer than some of their new-found critics have been on the planet, although which planet some of them are on is open to question.
And what is their crime? To stand up to the virulent streak of anti-Semitism staining one of the country’s great political institutions.
Jeremy Corbyn could have nipped the ludicrous ‘resign Watson’ plot in the bud with a simple public statement but it is telling that he kept quiet, as he has done on far too much of this unseemly summer crisis.
Perhaps the last word should go to Mr Watson himself, who said ‘I never thought I’d be facing demands to resign for standing up for people who are facing prejudice and hate’.
Quite right too, and this newspaper stands four-square not only with Mr Watson and Mr Austin but also every MP of every political colour who is determined to stand up against anti-Semitism, racism – and bullying.
