Tom Watson’s Twitter feed has gone a bit quiet recently. Strange, as he is normally quite vocal about media ethics and their failings. But his silence is well-judged: when he stood up in PMQs and referred to a ‘a powerful pedophile network linked to Parliament and Number 10’ and referred to ‘senior aide of a former Prime Minister’ he started a massive and tawdry guessing game, just as the Newsnight investigation did. And was his evidence any stronger? Harriet Harman has just been asked on BBC Sunday Politics, and she didn’t know. For those who missed it, here’s Watson’s PMQs intervention:
Of course, MPs can make any accusation they like in parliament and be protected from being sued. This is an ancient privilege, but has acquired a new potency in the Twitter era because if your intervention is televised it takes about five seconds for a Twitter lynch mob to start having a guess.
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