Jeremy Corbyn appoints convicted arsonist Mike Watson as his education spokesman

Given that Jeremy Corbyn is a Hamas sympathiser with an IRA sympathiser as his Shadow Chancellor, I imagine he didn’t think too much about promoting a little-known Scot named Mike Watson. He is a Labour peer, who now takes a place in Corbyn’s frontbench as education spokesman. He is also a convicted arsonist, who quit the Scottish Parliament in disgrace after being caught drunkenly setting fire to a set of curtains during the Scottish Politician of the Year ceremony 2004. He was sentenced to 20 months in prison, which he served in HMP Edinburgh. Watson’s undeserved rehabilitation says much about how Corbyn is having to scrape the very bottom of the barrel for people willing to serve under him. I was political editor of The Scotsman at the time of Watson’s conviction, and remember it as the lowest point that Holyrood sank to. Here’s how my then newspaper reported it:-