‘He’s served his time’ – fire-raiser Mike Watson back in Labour Party after jail term

The peer has been readmitted to Labour after the party’s ruling national executive committee opted not to block the former Glasgow politician’s application to rejoin.

Watson, who served as a tourism minister in the Scottish Government under Jack McConnell, was handed a 16-month jail term after he was convicted of setting fire to curtains at Edinburgh’s Prestonfield House Hotel during a political awards ceremony in 2004.

The blaze was reported to have caused £4,500 worth of damage.

He served eight months of the sentence and was expelled from the Labour Party, after which he sat as an independent or crossbench member of the House of Lords.

However, he has now been handed back the Labour whip in the Lords as well as being
allowed to rejoin the party in London, where he now lives.

A Labour Party spokesman confirmed that Watson, who was appointed to the Lords in 1997 when his Westminster seat was abolished, “had not applied to join the Scottish Labour Party” but refused to comment on the former minister’s readmission in England.

Watson, who was elected as an MSP in the first round of Scottish Parliament elections in 1999, was allowed to reapply to join Labour five years after being expelled in line with party rules.

Senior Labour peer Lord George Foulkes said that he was “strongly in favour” of allowing Watson back into the party’s ranks and said that he had spoken on his behalf when the decision was taken to readmit him.

Lord Foulkes said: “I went to the national executive committee to speak on his behalf. He’s served his time and we have got to have some sense of forgiveness.