Tom Watson — the day the UK Music died
WHO could forget that famous photograph of Tom Watson at the Glastonbury pop festival in 2017, looking like Super Mario’s morbidly obese brother?
It shamed the politician formerly known as Tommy Two Pizzas into embarking on a drastic crash diet.
Readers of this column know Watson best as the Nonce Finder General, responsible — in cahoots with a notorious, now convicted, fantasist and sex offender called Carl Beech — for trashing the lives and reputations of blameless men falsely accused of ‘historic’ crimes such as child rape and even murder.
Yet while some of his victims died before they could clear their names, and others are still living with the trauma of being publicly denounced as paedophiles and worse, Watson has been allowed to rehabilitate himself.
In November, he stood down from his West Midlands seat, shortly before it fell to the Tories. If he’d had a shred of decency, he would have slithered away under whichever stone he emerged from and stayed there.
Instead, he stepped up a shameless campaign of self-promotion beneath the guise of promoting a novel and a diet plan, detailing how he managed to shed eight stone. And he still fancies his chances of copping a peerage.
Now, incredibly, he has been appointed chairman of UK Music, the umbrella organisation which represents everyone from songwriters and musicians to record companies and publishers.
The news was sneaked out last week under cover of the coronavirus crisis and has gone largely unreported in the mainstream media until today.
Many appalled members of UK Music only learned of it via email or word of mouth. Watson’s appointment, which is believed to pay around £60,000 for a two-day week, has been greeted with incredulity and disgust.
don’t forget that some wellknown people in the music industry were swept up in the postJimmy Savile sex crimes hysteria which Watson did so much to fuel. One of those who suffered from false allegations, the radio and TV presenter and author Paul Gambaccini, wrote to UK Music at the end of last year when rumours began to spread that Watson was in the running, pleading with them not to give him the job.
Gambo’s justified concerns were obviously ignored.
Watson is understood to have had strong support from the Musicians Union and other Left-leaning industry figures, but his appointment was opposed by record label and publishing executives. As chairman, Watson will be responsible for lobbying and negotiating on behalf of an industry which generates more than £5 billion a year and employs 190,000 people.
What qualifies him for this crucial role, apart from the occasional visit to Glastonbury and a bizarre obsession with an obscure pop group called drenge? Has he been hired for his political influence?
If so, I fear UK Music may be in for some disappointment.
Leave aside the question of whether a petulant, partisan politician with such a disreputable track record is a fit and proper person to represent one of the country’s most important and admired creative industries.
It is entirely feasible that for the next ten years Britain will be governed by a Conservative Party which considers Watson a pariah, since he has spent the best part of the last decade smearing leading Tories as child molesters.
If those who appointed Watson think he will be able to promote UK Music’s public image, they must have overlooked the fact that he hates the popular Press, which he tried to bring under strict State control over alleged phone- hacking. The feeling’s mutual.
To be honest, it’s difficult to think of anyone less suited to the job. I stick with my assessment of Watson as one of the most malevolent, malignant individuals ever to soil British politics.
Underneath the sleek new carapace, he remains a selfserving, self- righteous zealot, utterly unfit for high office anywhere, not just politics. What the music business has done to deserve him is a mystery.