A Deputy Leadership Election About What?

If there were indeed to be a Deputy Leadership Election between Tom Watson and Laura Pidcock, then what would it be about? What would be the issues?

Watson does not openly dissent from any part of the 2017 Labour manifesto except that, like Pidcock, he now favours a second EU referendum and a campaign to Remain. Nor has he dissented from Jeremy Corbyn's call for an end to British complicity in the Saudi war in Yemen.

Meanwhile, Pidcock accepts the existence of widespread anti-Semitism in Corbyn's Labour Party, she accepts the IHRA Definition, she accepts the authority of the "Equality" and Human Rights Commission to proceed as if that Definition were the law of the land, she does not support the reinstatement of Chris Williamson, and she has not deviated from Corbyn's acceptance of at least some of the Government's collapsed and discredited claims about Salisbury, Amesbury, and Douma.

Unlike Williamson, neither Watson nor Pidcock has ever expressed an acceptance of Modern Monetary Theory. Both of them are in favour of gender self-identification, but Watson is more conservative on gambling and on substance abuse, making him the more reliable opponent of neoliberal capitalism. In itself, though, that difference hardly seems to be worth the trouble of holding a Deputy Leadership Election.

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