Tom Watson says 'brutality and hostility' made him quit as Labour's deputy leader
3 min read
Tom Watson has said he decided to quit as Labour's deputy leader because of the "brutality and hostility" he suffered at the hands of his critics.
The former MP, who served as Jeremy Corbyn's number two for four years, stunned the party when he announced he was quitting Parliament before the general election.
In an interview with The Guardian, Mr Watson also hit out at Labour's disastrous election campaign, claiming its message to voters was unclear up against Boris Johnson's pledge to "get Brexit done".
And he revealed for the first time that he had voted for Owen Smith when he challenged Mr Corbyn for the Labour leadership in 2016.
Announcing his decision to stand down as deputy leader and as MP for West Bromwich East in November, Mr Watson said it was a "personal, not political" decision not connected to the well-documented differences he had had with Mr Corbyn over Labour's left-wing direction.
Expanding on that in the interview, he said: "The point is that the brutality and hostility is real and it’s day to day. So I just thought: now’s the time to take a leap, do something different. You’ve had a good innings. You’ve done good stuff. Go now."
On the criticism he received on social media as well as from internal party critics and trade unions, Mr Watson said: "On their own, you deal with them and they’re a normal part of life. Combine them, and you’re carrying a very heavy load. And sometimes you’ve got to realise when that balance of life shifts and there are other things that are more rewarding."
The long-running feud between Mr Watson and the Labour leadership led to an attempt to effectively sack him as deputy leader on the eve of the party's annual conference in September, a move he described as an act of "political idiocy and collective self-harm".
On Labour's election campaign - which resulted in the Conservatives winning an 80-seat majority - he said: "I don’t even know what the message of our campaign was. There were announcements everywhere, but none of them got through because there were so many. You knew what Boris Johnson’s was: Get Brexit done. What was the Labour strapline?"
Mr Corbyn has announced that he will stand down as Labour leader, with his successor expected to be in place by the end of March.
Mr Watson said that whoever takes over must move the party back towards the political centre ground.
He said: "Does the Labour Party in its current form actually want power? The ultimate betrayal of working-class people is not to take power when you can, and if you are a party that believes in power through elections, then that requires pragmatism, prioritisation, compromise and collaboration."
The 2016 leadership election followed the attempted coup against Mr Corbyn's leadership in the wake of the EU referendum.
Labour MPs passed a motion of no confidence in their leader, leading to Owen Smith's unsuccesful attempt to claim the top job.
Mr Watson said: "I did vote for Owen, but I’ve never said it publicly before.
"I thought, as soon as the leader loses the confidence of the parliamentary party it’s almost impossible to see how you can form a government. I thought Jeremy should have resigned, and he nearly did."
Elsewhere in the interview, Mr Watson also accused party officials of failing to inform him that a threat had been made against his life.
He said: "Two weeks before I resigned, a guy was arrested for giving me a death threat. He was a Labour supporter. The police got in touch and said, ‘We’ve arrested this guy’, assuming I knew about it. But I didn’t.
"The Labour Party had sent out a fundraising email that he had responded to with a death threat. The party reported it to the police, but didn’t tell me."
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