Tom Watson pays tribute to former Labour leader John Smith on anniversary

Labour’s Deputy Leader will recall his memories of John Smith and praise his strong brand of values based on Christian socialism, the Labour tradition he most identifies with at the lecture in London.

Mr Watson will say had Mr Smith been alive today he would be standing with his deputy, Margaret Beckett, and backing a Peoples Vote as a way out of this "destructive mess".

And he will say John Smith knew better than anyone the difference between nationalism and patriotism and would have called out Farage and Tommy Robinson’s "plastic patriotism and exposed them for what they are - base nationalists of the nastiest kind, the ultimate cynics, playing on fears and lies".

Mr Watson will also plead with Labour voters thinking about the European elections and say “don’t stay at home, don’t put that cross elsewhere, don’t let them win.”

He is set to say Mr Smith was the architect of Labour’s constitutional reform and that English devolution, which Mr Smith believed in, is "unfinished business", and is the path to defeating Farage, Tommy Robinson and their like in the longer term.

On Mr Watson's personal memories he is set to say: “I was a young man when John Smith died. I knew him, as well as a junior staffer at the party headquarters could know the Leader.

"But ask anyone who worked with him, many of whom are here this evening, and we will tell you the relationship was more than one of dutiful subservience.

"We loved him. We had faith in him. We believed in him.

"Those qualities that the British people so warmed to, and grieved when he died, when strangers wept in the streets, and brought flowers to the steps of 150 Walworth Road, were even more apparent up close.

"His warmth, his intellect, his humour, his determination and above all his values."

The lecture will be hosted by the Fabian Society and is supported by John Smith’s family at The Lecture Hall at the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, in Parliament Square, London.