When the exit poll that foretold of Labour’s worst election defeat since 1987 was published, many in the party reacted with stunned incredulity. But Tom Watson, a self-described campaign veteran, was not one of them. “Having been around a while I knew that it was very bad news immediately,” the West Bromwich East MP tells me when we meet 11 days later. “I tried to believe Paddy Ashdown when he said ‘I’ll eat my hat’ but I know how large a sample [the polls] are.”
Watson, who served as Labour’s campaign co-ordinator from 2011 to 2013, says this feeling was informed by decades of experience. “I first started collecting numbers for the Labour Party when I was seven years old in the 1974 election. I stood on the steps of Walworth Road next to Neil Kinnock the day we lost the ‘87 election. I was working at Millbank when we won the ‘97 election. I’ve been there for the highs and the lows.”
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