Posturing on moral high ground, MP who backed sex abuse liar
REMEMBER when Madonna briefly restyled herself as a country manor house chatelaine? It came shortly after her marriage to Guy Ritchie. Out went the conical bras and foul language. In came flat caps, country tweeds and a polished, cut-glass accent.
Seasoned observers of Madge’s career never really bought this demure new persona. Sure enough, she was back to throwing strops and flashing her knickers before you could yell ‘tally ho!’
I’m often reminded of this short-lived stab at respectability when contemplating Labour deputy leader Tom Watson’s new image.
Mr Watson, you will have noticed, has undergone his own radical makeover over this past year, journeying from pilsnerswilling rabble-rouser to softly spoken frontbench moderate.
Some even regard him as Labour’s conscience, especially when compared with the more extreme elements who occupy the party’s upper echelons.
But there are many around Westminster who maintain reservations about this Damascene conversion. ‘Tom Watson gone soft?’ they scoff. ‘Don’t you believe it.’
We saw a flash of Watson Mark I at Somerset House yesterday. It came shortly into a talk he was giving to the Creative Industries Federation lobby group.
Mr Watson arrived fashioning a white buttoned- up shirt, untucked like a nightdress, and trendy Nike sneakers. Had he worn a beret and been sprouting whiskers, he could have been a chin- stroking intellectual from Paris’s Left Bank.
As he tried to woo his creative audience, we heard puzzling quotes from Joseph Conrad, Dylan Thomas and Emily Bronte. The passages he weaved into his speech were overly long and barely apposite. It was like a pretentious adolescent trying to impress his girlfriend.
We also heard about his love of music. He recalled seeing Oasis perform at Hull’s Adelphi Club. ‘In 1988, I think.’ Unlikely. The band didn’t form until 1991.
Then came a mention of the Prime Minister. Boris Johnson, he said, his vocal cords clenched with moral authority, a finger and thumb pinching his tortoiseshells for emphasis, was
‘the most disgraceful Conservative politician of his generation’.
A gasp, a gulp, then a brief snort of derision from a brother sketch- writer. Really? Seriously? Was he at it again?
Tom Watson, chief proponent of serial fantasist Carl ‘Nick’ Beech’s claims which destroyed the reputations of war hero Lord Bramall and other senior public officials, once again handing down judgment from on high about other people’s moral fibre? Well, well, well.
Mr Johnson’s main crime, in Mr Watson’s eyes, is that he is trying to deliver Brexit. Exiting the European Union, Mr Watson assured the audience, was a dreadful idea which would decimate the creative sector and he intends to stop it. He even admitted that whatever deal the Government engineered out of Brussels, he wouldn’t vote for it.
As such, he wants a second referendum before a general election happens. Just as he said this, shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer was on stage at the TUC conference in Brighton announcing Labour’s official policy was to demand an election first. Trouble at t’mill last night, I suspect. This was supposed to be a partisan audience but looking around the vault- ceilinged room, you wouldn’t have noticed. It was made up mainly of scruffily dressed media types staring at their phones. Many, I expect, were there as an excuse to get out of the office in the morning.
As the talk began to fizzle out, news broke that judges at Edinburgh’s Court of Session had unanimously ruled that the Prime Minister’s suspension of Parliament this week was illegal. Oh dear. This week just goes from bad to dreadful for the Government.
Who knows, perhaps in years to come we will look back at this barmy past fortnight and agree with Tom Watson that Boris Johnson really was the most disgraceful politician in this golden generation of duplicitous scoundrels. But I have a feeling Lord Bramall et al will carry a different view.