Don’t just blame Tom Watson for the fake child abuse scandal

I don’t carry a brief for Tom Watson. I have attacked him in the strongest terms for his part in spreading a fake child abuse scandal that wrecked the lives and reputations of innocent men. (The headline on my piece, ‘Why a deserved downfall beckons for Tom Watson’, gives a flavour of the way my argument went). But I, and I hope you, retain a good enough nose to smell a rat.

It suits the interests of the police and supposed ‘investigative’ journalists to say the deputy leader of Labour party was responsible for promoting a ludicrous conspiracy theory about a VIP child abuse ring. Shifting the blame helps them escape the charge that they should have known that ‘Nick’s’ story of rape at the hands of, among others, Lord Brittan, former chief of the defence staff Lord Bramall, Edward Heath and former Tory MP Harvey Proctor was provably false.

Any competent detective or journalist could have discredited it in a day and saved £2 million in public money but a great deal of needless misery.

Arguments about whether to believe the ‘victims’ of abuse miss the point.