CREDIT: BRUCE ADAMS
PUBLISHED: 00:12, 27 May 2024 | UPDATED: 00:36, 27 May 2024
In the House of Lords last week, Labour's Tom Watson launched a diatribe against the Press during a debate on the media, boasting he had cancelled lunch with rock star Bruce Springsteen to speak in it.
Baron Watson of Wyre Forest — to give him his full moniker — became chairman of industry body UK Music after he left the Commons in 2019. He name-dropped 'The Boss', as Springsteen is known, more than once.
But surely the name he should have mentioned in any debate on the media was Lord Bramall, the former head of the Armed Forces. Or Lord Brittan, the former Tory Home Secretary, or Harvey Proctor, the ex-Tory MP.
For it was Watson who shamefully promoted the false allegations of historical child abuse levelled by fantasist Carl Beech against these distinguished individuals.
Police raided their homes as a result of Beech's lies, and Bramall's wife died in July 2015 without knowing he would not be charged, while Lord Brittan went to his grave before his name had been cleared.
It was the Press that helped expose Beech and his claims of a paedophile ring in Westminster.
Needless to say, many other peers were outraged by Watson. Baroness Fleet, a former newspaper editor, summed up the mood when she said: 'I heard the attack of Lord Watson on newspapers. I wonder what Lord Brittan might have replied.'
The Krays and a job at the Treasury
Political quote of the week from Kelvin MacKenzie: 'With his grandfather being a chum of the Krays and jailed for armed robbery and his grandmother doing time in Holloway, surely Wes Streeting (Shadow Health Secretary) would make a better Chancellor than Rachel Reeves, as thieving would be in his DNA.'
There was a timely episode in Dr Who on Saturday featuring a General Election, albeit in 2046, when fictional Welsh Prime Minister Roger Ap Gwilliam said in his victory speech: 'I will go to His Majesty and prepare for government.'
Reminded me of 1981 when, at the Liberal Assembly in Llandudno, the Liberal leader David Steel told delegates: 'Go back to your constituencies and prepare for government.'
The Tories won by a landslide two years later.
With current Mother of the House Harriet Harman stepping down, who will become the longest-serving female MP? If re-elected it'll be Diane Abbott, suspended from the parliamentary Labour Party but expected to run as an independent.
The July 4 election date is bad news for cross-dressing actor Eddie Izzard.
Having twice failed to be selected as a Labour candidate, he was looking for a constituency.
But he is booked for a one-man show of Hamlet in London until June 30.
Spare a thought for Labour's Chris Webb, elected MP for Blackpool South on May 2.
He's back on the campaign trail, and unlikely even to make a maiden speech before Parliament winds up on Thursday.
Joke of the week
James Corden, at a charity gala at London's Natural History Museum, said: 'There are dinosaurs in this museum that are younger than the two men trying to be President of the United States.'
Farage's favour for Lammy
Many Labour MPs are deeply sceptical about whether loose-lipped David Lammy has got what it takes to be Foreign Secretary.
He's described Donald Trump as a 'racist Ku Klux Klan and Nazi sympathiser'.
So it's ironic that, on Lammy's recent trip to the U.S., Team Trump agreed to meeting him only after a call to the ex-President's chum Nigel Farage, who gave the OK.
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