Is this an attempt to launch an attack against Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party on two fronts?

A few days ago, the Jewish Labour Movement announced that it would remain affiliated to Labour – with a threat that it could still leave, and cause a stink while doing it, if the party doesn’t accept its lunatic posturings about anti-Semitism. See this article for the hideous details.

It seems Tom Watson will ask fellow Labour MPs to join his latest attempt to split the Parliamentary party at a meeting on Monday. This new party-within-a-party will be called the Future Britain Group and is likely to consist of Blairites who don’t like the fact that Mr Corbyn has been returning Labour to its proper position on the political map – slightly left-of-centre.

Mr Watson would rather see Labour occupying the position it took under the leadership of Tony Blair – on a par with the Conservative Party, firmly on the authoritarian right.

It will be interesting to see how many Labour backbenchers will have the courage to put their heads above the parapet and admit to their constituency parties that they plan to betray the hundreds of thousands of new members who joined because they support the Corbyn project to restore Labour to its rightful place.

Occurring so soon after the JLM made its ultimatum, it seems likely to This Writer that Mr Watson is hoping to orchestrate some kind of exodus from the party, to create more bad publicity for Mr Corbyn and bring his leadership into disrepute. It’s what he has been doing ever since he was elected deputy leader in 2015.

Alternatively, he may be hoping to stir up enough anti-Corbyn sentiment to oust the leader altogether and take his place – although I cannot consider that to be anything more than wishful thinking.

It seems likely that Mr Watson will use his new group to try to force concessions out of Mr Corbyn that weren’t forthcoming when TInGe (The Independent Group of elitists) was created a couple of weeks ago. Robert Peston summed them up in a series of tweets on Wednesday:

The trouble with the last point there – that Watson is claiming Labour representatives may defect to TInGe – is that Chuka Umunna’s band of rebels has sunk, almost without trace. Any politician would have to be mad to consider joining it now, as David Turner points out:

That’s why Mr Peston got short shrift for his interpretation of Mr Watson’s meeting with the Lords.

And the Labour membership at large has run out of patience with Mr Watson:

Zero credibility.

His latest plan won’t earn any of that lost credibility back, either. The Guardian reported that, in his invitation for Parliamentary colleagues to join the group, “the language echoes that used by MPs from the Independent Group, including Chuka Umunna”.

And who, among the ranks of Labour MPs, wants to look like an unprincipled squatter?

Least principled of all, it seems, is Mr Watson himself.

“As deputy leader, it’s my job to do everything I can to hold the party together and ensure we are ready to government [sic],” he stated. But we all know that he has done his level best to split Labour apart and harm public opinion so severely that a Corbyn-led Labour could never form a government.

You have only to look at the way he has been stoking the anti-Semitism row to see proof of that.

Those with longer memories may recall the scandal when it was claimed that members of Labour’s campaign team had deliberately handicapped the party’s efforts in the 2017 election – and that, if the party had put resources where they were needed, it could have won. Responsibility for that may be laid at Mr Watson’s door.

Labour’s half-a-million members know the score. They have long memories and have seen enough of Mr Watson to form their own opinion of him. And they want him out.

Anyone following him into his Future Britain Group will find there is no future for them in Britain’s politics.

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