Did Watson go quietly to get peerage?
In move that would sicken sex fantasist victim Lord Bramall...
JEREMY Corbyn faced fury yesterday over claims that his former deputy Tom Watson will be rewarded with a peerage if he does not attack the Labour leader in the election.
It means Mr Watson could sit in the Lords alongside former Army chief Lord Bramall, one of the victims of false claims of a Westminster paedophile ring made by fantasist Carl Beech – who was controversially backed by Mr Watson.
The late Lord Brittan, a former Tory home secretary, was also falsely smeared by Beech, known as ‘Nick’.
Mr Watson resigned as deputy Labour leader on Wednesday following a series of clashes with Mr Corbyn over his hard-Left policies and Labour’s ongoing antiSemitism crisis.
But many Labour MPs were puzzled by the absence of any criticism of Mr Corbyn in the resignation statement from the usually outspoken Mr Watson.
The West Bromwich East MP claimed he was stepping down for ‘personal not political’ reasons.
According to a source, Labour will back a peerage for Mr Watson – but only if he stays quiet in the run-up to polling day on December 12 about his view that Mr Corbyn is unfit to be prime minister.
Asked if the Labour leadership had intimated it would nominate Mr Watson for a peerage in return for not disrupting Mr Corbyn’s election campaign, a Labour Party spokesman said: ‘Any future nominations for peerages will be dealt with in the normal way.’
Friends of Lord Brittan and Lord Bramall, 95, say it would be ‘ appalling’ if Mr Watson was ennobled.
One peer insisted he should not be elevated to the Lords, adding: ‘He does not deserve to sit on the same benches after the pain and misery he inflicted on them and their families.
‘He is discredited as a campaigner and should not be given another parliamentary platform for his views.’
In his response to Mr Watson’s resignation, Mr Corbyn also avoided controversy, telling his former number two and Labour foe lightheartedly: ‘I hope the horseradish plants I gave you thrive.’
The true depth of hostility towards Mr Watson among those close to the leader surfaced in a botched plot by Mr Corbyn’s allies to oust him on the eve of the Labour Party conference in September.
Yesterday, Labour attempts to play down Mr Watson’s resignation were blown apart as rebel former Labour MPs and ministers queued up to urge people to vote for Boris Johnson to keep Mr Corbyn out of No 10.
They included the outgoing Dudley North MP Ian Austin, a former aide to Gordon Brown and close personal and political ally of Mr Watson, Barrow and Furness MP John Woodcock, another former aide to Mr Brown, and Tom Harris, a minister in Tony Blair’s government.
Mr Watson did not respond to the Mail’s requests for a comment last night.
His departure ends an 18year career in Westminster – and puts the hard-Left in unassailable control of Labour. He has been a highprofile target for Mr Corbyn’s hard-Left supporters, but his mandate as Labour’s directly elected deputy leader made him hard to budge.
The Momentum group’s failure to eject him as deputy leader just before the party’s conference came after he clashed with the Labour leadership over his support for a second Brexit referendum.
‘Pain and misery he inflicted’