It’s UN blue helmet time for the deputy leader Tom Watson as he struggles to keep the peace between Labour’s warring factions.
The burly veteran of the uprising that toppled Tony Blair is brokering an armed truce. His strategy, I’m told, is to persuade both sides to hold fire. Rebels remain in the bunker and Corbynistas are moving to change party rules. Either pulling a trigger would send the other nuclear.
Tensions between the Corbyn and McDonnell camps fuel rumours the veggie Jeremy may later step aside for carnivorous John. Watson, says my snout, believes Labour would be ungovernable if MPs locked the left out of any contest.
John Mann, caught glancing to check whether cameras were rolling ahead of his Brawl in the Hall with Red Ken, has posturing form. The Bassetlaw bruiser and his former colleague Denis MacShane earned blistering rebukes for “glib evidence” and “appearing supremely confident of the rightness of their positions” three years ago as witnesses at a failed employment tribunal that attempted to find “institutional anti-Semitism” in a University and College Union-backed Israel boycott.
The 45-page judgment noted: “When it came to anti-Semitism in the context of debate about the Middle East, [Mann] announced: ‘It’s clear to me where the line is . . .’ but unfortunately eschewed the opportunity to locate it for us. Both parliamentarians clearly enjoyed making speeches. Neither seemed at ease with the idea of being required to answer a question not to his liking.”
Gobby Mann and Shoot-From-the-Lip Livingstone were made for each other.
Many thanks to the reader with a long memory who reminded me this column noted in June 2009 how Jeremy Hunt was a six-day weeker, after his Surrey office informed Haslemere Rugby Club he didn’t work Sundays. Now he’s Health Secretary, screaming about a seven-day NHS in England, I’d be happy to update his availability should Hunt wish to get in touch. Emails and calls are answered all weekend.
Labour holds no monopoly on anti-Semitism. A former Labour MP recalled asking an esteemed Tory grandee, still an MP, over dinner whether Livingstone should have apologised for likening a Jewish reporter on the London Evening Standard to a concentration camp guard. “Oh no,” sneered the prominent Con, “the Hebs are getting above themselves.” The term “Hebs” is, apparently, posh for Hebrews. You learn something nasty every day.
Imagine the tweet the experts at No 10 could have prevented the football-crazy Cameron from sending: “As a keen Aston Ham fan I congratulate Leicester Town on winning the FA Cup.”
Kevin Maguire is the associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
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This article appears in the 04 May 2016 issue of the New Statesman, The longest hatred