Sometimes – perhaps because he’s often all but invisible – it is possible to forget what an odious toad Tom Watson is. My position on the current Labour party is well known and oft stated: I will never vote for the party while it is lead by somebody who took money from Iranian state TV, at least up until the time when he recants and donates the fee to an appropriate charity. This is what is called a principle, although they seem very rare these days. Irrespective of the leadership, I will only vote for parties that are explicitly committed to remaining in the single market and customs union after Brexit. That’s at the very least: ideally I want a promise to remain in the EU. You will appreciate that this outlook narrows my choice of election candidates considerably.
However, Tom Watson is another whole skip-full of rancid lard. £500,000 from Max Moseley (who Watson describes as a friend)? Supporting restrictions on the freedom of the press? Aiding and abetting ludicrous police investigations against Leon Brittan and others? I don’t think so. And I don’t think much of any party that elects and then allows such a person to remain as deputy leader.
I’m still trying to get my head around the pensions-related industrial action currently taking place. For historical reasons, plus atavistic instinct, I remain a member of the University and College Union (UCU), although my own arrangements are with the Teachers’ Pension Scheme rather than USS. On the one hand it’s easy to understand disquiet at the possible loss of benefits. On the other, as Danny Finkelstein points out https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/lecturers-can-t-expect-us-to-pay-their-pensions-nsq30t2fw (£), the Universities are already paying an astonishingly generous 18% of salaries into the scheme and they can’t be expected to stump up any more – and even if they were the extra costs would have to be met somehow, whether via tuition fees or government support.