Tom Watson resigns - with an embittered letter to Ed Miliband

By Mark Wallace
Follow Mark on Twitter.

The Falkirk scandal, and the wider attempted union takeover of the Labour Party, has claimed its first scalp. Tom Watson has resigned as head of Ed Miliband's general election campaign.

There are various very good reasons for Watson to go over the various brazen attempts to fix Labour's selection process, as Dan Hodges recited earlier in the week.

Watson's resignation letter reveals that this is an increasingly sticky situation for Miliband - and it is evident that he is not resigning on good terms.

The tone speaks volumes - starting from the tongue-in-cheek reference to "Independence Day", through to the painful attempt to appear cool by pluggin his new favourite band (Drenge, since you ask), it doesn't seem like he's sad to be leaving the Miliband operation.

For that matter, his personal tribute to Ed as "Buddha-like" won't be in the running for most welcome epitaph of the year.

He quite deliberately does Miliband no favours with the facts he chooses to reveal, either. Only a day after Cameron castigated his opponent for lacking the guts to let Watson go, the letter says:

"As you know, I offered my resignation on Tuesday and you asked me to reconsider. I’ve thought about it and still feel it is better for you and the future unity of the party that I go now."

In doing so, he adds further fuel to a fire which he knows will cause the Labour leadership further discomfort in the next few days. The picture of the Opposition Leader begging a bruiser like Watson to stay is not an inspiring one.

Then we get to the meat of the matter - and an explanation as to why Watson appears so vengeful:

"Yet it’s not the unattributed shadow cabinet briefings around the mess in Falkirk that has convinced me that the arrangement has run its course (though they don’t help). I believe that the report should be published – in full – and the whole truth told as soon as possible so that the record can be made clear. I’ve still not seen the report but believe there are an awful lot of spurious suppositions being written."

So not only does he explicitly take a swipe at Shadow Cabinet in-fighting, he drops Miliband right in it on the secret Falkirk report, too. Labour have refused Tory and Blairite demands to publish - but it is hard to see how they can reject Watson's calls in the same way.

Labour sources tell me that the Watson operation are furious that Unite messed up the Falkirk selection-fixing so badly. They don't object to the idea of skewing selections to get Leftists selected - far from it, they are angry that the union's incompetence got the whole racket rumbled.

That he is now taking the fall for Len McCluskey's stuff-up in Falkirk, having got away with influencing so many selections elsewhere, rankles with Tom Watson. It offends his evidently extensive admiration for his own talents, hence his decision to write such a damaging resignation letter. No number of tips on new bands can hide that.

Labour MPs attack Jubilee celebrations as irrational and "a show of opulence by state elites"

By Matthew Barrett
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This morning, Tory MP Greg Hands tweeted: "Still lots of Labour MPs on Twitter carping and trying to find fault - any fault - they can with the Jubilee. Sad, but not surprising."

Hands was referring to the lack of positive tweets about the Jubilee celebrations coming from Labour MPs. A number of them were tweeting about the bad treatment of unemployed people used as stewards for the celebrations. Other thoughts from Labour MPs included:

Contagious infantalism silenced rational argument.

— Paul Flynn(@Paulflynnmp) June 6, 2012

Denis MacShane tried to put this angle on the coverage:

Professor friend abroad calls to say he was struck at all faces in Jubilee events seemed to be white. That right?

— Denis MacShane (@DenisMacShane) June 6, 2012

A LabourList poll suggests a steep decline in popularity for Ed Miliband over strikes

By Joseph Willits 
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Last week we reported some bad news for Ed Miliband, that according to a poll in the Sun, only 1 in 5 Labour voters would back him. Today signals further disappointment for the Labour leader with a poll on LabourList blaming Miliband's handling of public sector pensions strikes on 30th November for a steep decline in popularity.

• Only 26% of those polled consider Ed Miliband to be doing a 'good' or 'excellent' job as leader of the Labour party, compared to 40% in October, and 59% at his peak in July.
• The biggest percentage grouping of 41% felt Miliband's performance was 'poor' or 'very poor'.
• 33% would describe Miliband as 'average'.
• Although 83% of LabourList readers backed the strikes, 67% believed Miliband handled the situation badly. 
• Tom Watson, Yvette Cooper, and Andy Burnham were the three most popular in the Shadow Cabinet.

The poll was conducted between Monday 5th and Friday 9th December. 604 people voted. LabourList's Mark Ferguson wrote:

"It remains to be seen whether Miliband can bounce back in the New Year, or whether the damage done is permanent".