Good riddance to the Nonce Finder General

THIS column has never done honeymoon periods. It doesn’t do bogus political obituaries, either. So forgive me for not joining in the national day of mourning for Tom Watson.

Reading, watching and listening to some of the coverage of his decision to stand down as an MP and Labour deputy leader, you might have formed the impression that the nation was losing a valiant, selfless public servant, a voice of moderation, the like of whom we may never see again.

That so many people have been fooled into looking upon him as some kind of guardian of the decent soul of Labour says as much about their own shallow gullibility as it does about the man himself.

I’ve never bought into the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ view of the world. Just because Watson is hated by the Corbynistas, it doesn’t absolve him of his multitude of sins.

He can’t be allowed to shed his wicked past, like one of those Weight Watchers of the Year posing alongside a cardboard cut- out of his Nonce Finder General former self.

The truth is he’s one of the most malevolent, malignant individuals ever to soil British politics, a self- serving, self- pitying, selfrighteous enemy of free speech and persecutor of innocent men and their families.

His resignation has largely been refracted, understandably, through the prism of the current General Election. It is undoubtedly a body blow to Labour’s campaign.

But if Watson intended it to cause maximum embarrassment to the Momentum clique running the party, why wait until now? HE COULD have detonated his suicide belt on the day of Labour’s launch, instead of sitting in the front row applauding Corbyn’s speech.

If he genuinely believes that the Labour leader is unfit to be Prime Minister and poses a clear and present danger to this country’s safety and prosperity, he could have joined his ex-colleagues Ian Austin and John Woodcock and urged people to vote Tory.

Instead, he made it all about him — burbling about having been on a ‘health journey’ and wanting to move on with his life. Sweet. He didn’t mention that the only reason he had been on his health journey, shedding eight stone in the process, is because he had been eating and drinking himself into an early grave, much of the time on his parliamentary expenses. In fact, he spent so much taxpayers’ money at Marks & Sparks, they gave him a free pizza wheel.

I wonder if he ever spares a thought for those who can’t move on with their lives, like the families of the blameless men he falsely accused of child molesting and worse.

Watson abused Parliamentary privilege to incite the hysterical

Paedos In High Places witch-hunt against senior Tories, smearing them as rapists and murderers.

He used Prime Minister’s Questions to claim that there was a ‘powerful paedophile network linked to Parliament and No 10’ during the Thatcher years.

It’s what led me to dub him, in 2012, the Nonce Finder General. I had visions of him leading a torchlit procession down Whitehall, seeking out imaginary Tory kiddiefiddlers to be burned at the stake.

He compared former Home Secretary Leon Brittan to the serial sex fiend Jimmy Savile, writing that he was ‘as close to evil’ as any man could get.

Brittan died before he could be exonerated, but only belatedly did Watson issue a grudging statement of regret.

He put pressure on the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to pursue a vendetta against blameless individuals such as the then 91-year-old war hero Lord Bramall.

Watson helped to ensure that reputations were dragged through the mud, that homes were ransacked, that families were terrorised, that lives were ruined — and all on the word of a known fantasist, Carl Beech, aka Nick, currently serving 18 years for perverting the course of justice.

I’ve always maintained that if there really was any justice, Watson would have been in the dock beside Beech and should now be sharing a cell with him.

Then there was his bromance with Max Mosley, son of the wartime fascist leader Sir oswald Mosley, from whom he accepted a donation of more than half a million pounds. Watson shares with Mosley a hatred of the popular Press and has made several attempts to bring newspapers under state control.

Even after Max Mosley himself was exposed by this newspaper as having a revolting, racist past, Watson still refused to return the money.

He claims to be a lifelong Labour loyalist, but just a few months after Tony Blair gave him a job as a junior minister he was plotting to replace Blair with Gordon Brown.

Watson was also accused of being up to his neck in a vote-rigging scandal in Falkirk, Scotland, orchestrated by the unite trades union, although he was later cleared by an internal inquiry.

He has since fallen out with unite leader Len McCluskey, with whom he once shared a flat, over the union’s staunch support for Corbyn.

one theory currently doing the rounds is that Watson is leaving Parliament because he fancies his chances of succeeding McCluskey, if and when he ever retires.

That’s if unite don’t have McCluskey stuffed and propped up on the podium at the TuC, like those old Soviet dictators.

Certainly, Watson’s explanation that he is standing down to campaign on ‘health issues’ and ‘ Press intrusion’ rings hollow. Surely the best place to do that would be from inside Parliament.

So why is he going? Maybe he fears losing his seat next month. despite representing a heavily Leave constituency, Watson is a fanatical Remainer, agitating for a second referendum.

Perhaps, with Momentum now firmly in charge of Labour, he realises he’s got no future. obviously, if Corbyn did win, there was no chance of Watson ever becoming deputy Prime Minister, or even being given a Cabinet job. WHICH, come to think of it, is a small mercy. Corbyn would only ruin the country. Watson has a track record of helping to ruin people’s lives.

He may pose as a ‘moderate’ but can you imagine Britain run by the Nonce Finder General?

our increasingly politicised police and prosecution service would take their marching orders directly from downing Street.

We’d have a permanent judge-led inquisition into allegations of paedophilia, rape and murder by Tory politicians and Establishment figures. (Hang on, we’ve got that already.)

The newspapers would have to print only what the politicians told them to, otherwise they’d be put out of business. Fearless editors and uppity columnists like me would have our collars felt in dawn raids and be thrown into jail.

Yet, incredibly, you won’t be told any of this in the glowing tributes to Watson on the BBC and elsewhere. They are all prepared to overlook, or forget altogether, his past transgressions. As far as they are concerned, he is the greatest Prime Minister We Never Had.

Sorry, but I’m not buying any of it. Public life is well rid of the Nonce Finder General.

I’m sticking with my verdict that Watson — to adapt the outrageous smear he directed at Leon Brittan — is as close to evil as any politician can get.

or, as a headline on this column put it last year: ‘A muck-slinging zealot utterly unfit for high office.’

He can’t shed his evil past like a Weight Watchers winner