Evening Standard comment: Why Tom Watson is right to keep up his Labour fight

Tom Watson isn’t the man he used to be. Labour’s deputy leader has lost weight, got fit and brought his diabetes under control. But something else has changed about him, as he says in our interview with him today. Once he was seen as a bruiser, an ally of Gordon Brown, who encouraged division. Now he’s bidding to hold things together between the hard Left — which has taken control of the party he’s been in all his political life — and mainstream MPs whose tolerance is being tested to the limit. Centrism in Labour isn’t dead, he promises — Labour needs both wings of the party and it’s Jeremy Corbyn’s job to make sure it happens. “Plurality is the only solution. It’s essential for everyone’s voice to be heard for us to be electorally successful”.

There’s a lot coming out of Labour’s conference in Liverpool that’s wrong. The party’s all over the place on Brexit . It’s plans for the economy won’t work. It looks too much like a cult around Mr Corbyn and its leader doesn’t have what it takes to be Prime Minister. His response to anti-Semitism in the party won’t be forgiven or forgotten. The party is not even as popular in the polls as its supporters think. However, despite all that, Conservatives as well as Labour supporters should pay attention to what Mr Watson has to say to us today.

Yes, it might have been easier for him to have given up and written the party off as a lost cause — or sat back and kept his fears private. But instead he has hung in there and kept fighting (which is one reason the Left wants to change the rules to create a second deputy leader’s post, to be held by a woman). “Stay and fight. Fight your corner; build your case. Don’t stop. That’s what I’ve done in 36 years. You win some you lose some in politics,” he says. It’s never easy — and not always right — to be a figure in the middle calling for compromise. And if that simply ends up helping Mr Corbyn, without any give in return, then history won’t judge it kindly. But there’s a place, too, for people who try to make things work. At the very least, the state of the Conservative Party means that a Labour return to power one day can’t be ruled out, and if that happens it will be people like Mr Watson who matter.

Next’s note on Brexit

From Debenhams to House of Fraser, big retailers are crashing. But not Next — today, its boss Simon Wolfson announced a rise in profit forecasts on the back of a successful summer. The company has been smart at preparing for tough times for big stores, which makes the warning note it issued today on the possible impact of Brexit worth reading .

Three things stand out. One, that the firm doesn’t see a Brexit upside — even though Lord Wolfson has been a leading business voice calling for Britain to leave the EU. The talk is of battening down the hatches, not preparing for a retail boom. Two, that the no-deal exit the Prime Minister says is the only alternative to her broken Chequers plan would be a nightmare for the economy. “It’s not our ideal scenario” Lord Wolfson tells this paper today, as his company warns of queues at ports, and sterling falling. So, the third thing that stands out is that if Chequers won’t fly and no-deal won’t work, we need another Brexit plan built on reality. Next’s note is a reminder that world trade depends on complex deals and rules. When it warns that a hard Brexit would hurt, and free trade isn’t simple, politicians should listen.

Hope for Iran release

Today in New York the Prime Minister will meet the Iranian President to ask for the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe. The British citizen has now spent more than two years in jail in Iran, with only a brief respite last month. Boris Johnson didn’t help when he waded in to the row last year — but then the Prime Minister spends a lot of time dealing with the mess left by her former Foreign Secretary. Let’s hope Iran sees sense and lets an innocent woman rejoin her family at last.