Is Tom Watson just a “fat wanker” carrying on a war started by his master, Gordon Brown?

In February, Tom Watson, the deputy chairman of the Labour Party, tweeted that a Sun article about the ongoing police enquiry into phone hacking needed a hastag (whatever that might be), and suggested #sunarrests. Forty minutes later, a Sun journalist responded that the hashtag should read @tom_watson you are a fat wanker. Fair comment, I’d say.

Watson, who has been pursuing a stalker-level vendetta against Rupert Murdoch for some time, confirmed his “fat wanker” status yesterday during a press conference about the select committee report into phone hacking by quoting Bob Dylan. I’ll quote from Telegraph Sketch writer Michael Deacon’s account:

’In the words of Bob Dylan,” [Watson] declared towards the end of a lengthy oration on News International’s misdeeds, ‘the ladder of the law has no top and no bottom.’
 These words evidently meant a lot to Mr Watson, because he recited them very solemnly indeed. For some reason, several reporters giggled. The rest of us, wary of revealing our ignorance, privately wondered what on earth he was on about.

That really does have “tosser” written all over it.

As we know, Watson was the MP mainly responsible for shoehorning a comment into the select committee report to the effect that Rupert Murdoch was not a fit person to run an international company – without, apparently having bothered discussing it with any of the Tory MPs on the committee. So, he just wanted to big himself up and make a splash (apologies – onanism on the brain), perhaps because he is the co-author of a forthcoming book about Murdoch.

So, given that a lefty like Watson won’t necessarily hold Murdoch’s undermining of the royal family or his role in coarsening our national life against him, what’s his beef with the old Amero-Aussie slugger?

Well, here’s a clue: the day before Watson sent Tony Blair a memo in 2006 telling the PM to resign, he had visited his master, Gordon Brown, at home, where, Watson later claimed, politics were not discussed. (Given Gordon Brown’s noted penchant for small-talk, it must have been a really entertaining visit.) So, partly thanks to Tom Watson, we got Gordon Brown as Prime Minister. Gee, thanks, Tom! Then, as we know, Murdoch withdrew his support from Gordon Brown and the brooding Scottish looney phoned up the world’s foremost media magnate and announced that his government was going to go to war with New International.

Gordy’s long gone, of course, but his robot soldiers – the equivalent of Soviet “sleepers” – are still carrying on the war. Watson’s on record as opposing News International’s attempted take-over of BSkyB on the grounds that Britain might end up with a Fox News-style conservative TV channel, evidently not having read Ofcom’s rules on impartiality. (Watson also has an obsession with ex-Fox programme host, Glenn Beck, claiming no other broadcaster had "displayed intolerance on such a frequent and irresponsible scale” as the Tea Party luminary – evidently unaware of the hate-filled bile regularly vomited up by some of MSNBC’s hard left  contributors). 

Two other things: before resigning from Blair’s government, Watson was instrumental in gaining a mass pardon for the British Empire soldiers executed during WWI – a classic example of modern liberal views being retroactively and smugly imposed on people who didn’t think the way we do now, and  had their hands rather full at the time (I really am sorry – just can’t help it).

During the MPs’ expenses scandal in 2009, it was revealed that Watson had claimed the full £4,800 food allowance for a single year (which might account for his shape), and that he and Ian Wright (not the footballer, one trusts) had claimed a total of £100,000 for the flat they shared.

Not quite the shining knight fighting nobly for truth and justice we might have been led to believe he was.