Probe proves Watson is unfit for peerage

SINCE ordered by then Home Secretary Theresa May in 2014, the independent inquiry into child sex abuse has often seemed painfully unwieldy and unfocused.

Would, many asked, the huge sums spent (£118million and counting) investigating paedophile allegations dating back 50 years be better used preventing future depravity and bringing still living culprits to justice? It was certainly a fair question.

Yet its chairman Alexis Jay, who got to the bottom of the Rotherham grooming scandal, has already uncovered appalling crimes in boarding schools and the Church.

Yesterday she upturned Westminster’s rock. In a damning judgement, she said the political establishment had for decades ‘turned a blind eye’ to abuse accusations.

Sickeningly, protecting the reputations of predatory MPs took priority over the safety of vulnerable youngsters.

In one case, ex-Liberal leader Lord Steel failed to report whispers that wicked Cyril Smith had molested care home children – then recommended him for a knighthood.

For victims, this was a day of justice. But for Tom Watson it was a day of unremitting shame. The ex- deputy Labour leader’s claims that a VIP paedophile ring operated in Westminster sparked the inquiry.

He destroyed lives peddling grotesque fantasies – that former home secretary Lord Brittan was part of an gang of child rapists and murderers – as part of a contemptible political vendetta. Such claims were, in the words of Professor Jay, baseless.

Revoltingly, Watson has been nominated by Jeremy Corbyn for a peerage. For blighting innocent people’s reputations, he should hang his head in disgrace.

As the detective who first probed Watson’s claims says in these pages, if he ever were to wear ermine it would be a grievous insult to all those whose lives he helped to ruin.