The Rise and Fall of Labour's Gay Grifter.
He donated a fortune to Labour, took Dawn Butler on an expenses paid trip to LA and screeched endlessly about trans rights. Now Anthony Watson has been dumped by the loss-making bank he founded.
The Labour Party likes to say the wealthy should not exert undue influence on our politics. That didn’t stop Anthony Watson trying to do just that and Labour was more than happy to take his money. Over £340K at the last count. And rising.
Yet as they complained loudly about so-called shady donors to the Conservatives, what did Labour politicians really know about Watson or his business record? Answers on the back of a postage stamp.
Watson’s story is bigger than that of a donor using his money to try to influence a political party. It is emblematic of how homosexuality has now become a marketing tool for the unscrupulous. This doesn’t just risk corrupting our politics. It amplifies the narcissism of some gay men, encouraging them to believe the intellectual potage of their unreconstructed views, flavoured with misogyny and ignorance, deserves to be taken seriously. Especially if it concerns Anthony Watson’s hobbyhorse: men in dresses.
They say you should write about what you know. I happen to know a lot about gay men which is why I tend to write about them a lot. I should say ‘us’, I suppose. The fact is I’ve been around long enough to recognise a certain type. Like the gay man gripped by a hunger for attention with a story to tell that somehow never quite stacks up. Don’t get me wrong, this type of gay man is no worse than his straight equivalent. Except in one key way.
Straight men don’t expect to be celebrated …for being straight. Some gay men now behave as if their sexuality makes them a fount of wisdom. Luckily for them, though not for the rest of us, we live in an exceptional moment, unparalleled in human history, where the mere act of identifying oneself as homosexual can confer this unearned status.
You’ll struggle to find a press story about Anthony Watson, the financial entrepreneur, major Labour donor and founder of the second UK clearing bank to win a license in 250 years, that doesn’t riff on his homosexuality. He’s routinely described as “one of the most influential gay men in the world” and his homosexuality is presented, not least by Watson himself, as part and parcel of his originality and alleged talent.
Watson’s homosexuality was one reason his new bank, Bank of London, garnered so many headlines when it launched in 2021.
It would also be used mercilessly as Watson organised petitions against the separation of the LGB from the T and accused LGB Alliance of being a hate group.
It would be front and centre too as he battled publicly with the likes of Helen Joyce, and buddied up with creepy Lord Cashman as he became Labour’s “Equality Czar”.
Watson’s homosexuality could not act as a special rainbow shield against reality forever though.
Last week his fortunes took a sudden turn for the worse.