The News Line: News
Monday, 25 February 2019
WATSON REBUKES NON-SOCIAL DEMOCRAT CORBYN!
THE DEPUTY leader of the Labour Party Tom Watson spoke to Andrew Marr’s BBC show on Sunday about diverting the party away from its present position under Corbyn into a social democratic direction.
He said that the ‘departure of our colleagues is a real blow to us and we need to understand why they felt they needed to go because if we are going to be in government we need to address those concerns’.
‘Does Jeremy Corbyn need to change?’ Marr asked. ‘If we are going to be in Number 10, there are things we need to do: We’ve got to eradicate anti-Semitism, anti-Jewish racism in all its forms,’ Watson replied, claiming he had 50 cases reported to him by colleagues that Corbyn needed to address by taking them to the NEC and saying these people need to be thrown out.
The British Jewish community would be the judge, he said. Marr contrasted Watson’s call for a ‘kinder, gentler’ party earlier in the week with Emily Thornberry’s angry speech about crushing the breakaways in by-elections.
‘I think it is incumbent on all of us to dial down the rhetoric … to try and bring the country back together that is divided by Brexit. On Brexit we need to reunify our party membership around the conference position.’
Asked whether he supported a second referendum after Prime Minister May’s statement and the prospective vote on Wednesday, Watson said, ‘Certainly, we are moving in that direction.’
He said what the Labour Party would prefer is that: ‘Theresa May aligns around our “red lines” which is closer economic closeness to the European Union, and if we can’t get our red lines back then the conference policy negotiated by Keir Starmer is that we go for a people’s vote.’
Asked outright that he did not believe that Jeremy Corbyn was a social democrat, he said that Corbyn belonged to a ‘different’ tradition, and that the party could only be successful if those different traditions could ‘rub along’ against each other, in the ‘broad church’ of the Labour Party.
He would prefer a reshuffle of the front bench because ‘that social democratic voice has to be heard, because that is the only way you can keep the Labour Party unified and prohibit other colleagues from potentially leaving the PLP. The situation is serious.’
Watson said he was going to call for the ‘small number’ of ‘hard left’ Labour Party members who used social media to amplify their voices against, for example, the ‘bright, young MP for Wavertree, Liverpool’, to be ‘dealt with’ for bringing the party into disrepute.
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