Ex-Labour deputy chief Tom Watson broadcasts his most cancers has returned
Labour grandee Tom Watson was first diagnosed with non-aggressive prostate cancer in March 2023, which he said caused his world to ’tilt’
Ex-Labour deputy leader Tom Watson will take a leave of absence from the House of Lords(Image: Rowan Griffiths Daily Mirror)
Former Labour deputy leader Tom Watson has said he is taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords after the return of his cancer.
Lord Watson was diagnosed with non-aggressive prostate cancer in March 2023, which he said caused his world to “tilt”. His treatment was successful, and he was later given the all clear.
But the Labour grandee, who served in Tony Blair and Gordon Brown’s governments, revealed on Friday that he had learned earlier this year that the cancer had returned. Initial tests suggest the second bout of cancer had gone but he will undergo more checks later this summer.
Lord Watson said it was a “wake up call” that he had neglected his health. He previously went on a weight loss crusade, losing seven stone and reversing his Type 2 diabetes. But in recent years he said he had been in denial as he started to pile on the pounds again.
“Several juggernauts hit me at once,” he wrote on his Substack. “I had spent three months in Cornwall with my sister and brother-in-law, helping give my stepfather a loving death. An important relationship imploded. I was, for a while, basically homeless. I returned to the House of Lords in Westminster, with all the media scrutiny that comes with it, and it was a shock to the system. The weight nudged back up.”
Then in March 2023 he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He said: “Cancer. The Big C. The thing you think happens to other people until it happens to you. My invincibility cloak blinked out.”
His work in the Lords kept him busy, along with renovating a house, leading to what he described as “over 1,000 days of drift and denial”. He used the weight-loss drug Mounjaro but put the weight back on.
The former MP for West Bromwich East wrote: “I knew the weight was piling on because my clothes no longer fitted me. I did not know how much I weighed because the denial toxin was flowing through my veins again.
“Today’s transgression would always be compensated for on another day, at an undefined time, in a future that was somehow both inevitable and never scheduled. Weight, blood pressure and blood glucose were the only things I was strong enough to push upwards.”
He continued: “Not only was I obese again, but the cancer came back earlier this year. Is it weird to say this was the wake-up call I needed to choose life again? Perhaps it is. But it is true.
“This time, I knew I had to build life around health again. Not bolt it on. Not squeeze it into whatever was left after work, travel, stress, email, politics, family, deadlines and the general admin of being alive. I had to put health at the centre and let everything else arrange itself around it.”
Lord Watson said he has stopped drinking, was exercising more and had changed his diet. He added: “So I have taken a leave of absence from the House of Lords for treatment and recuperation. Initial tests suggest the cancer has gone, though I will not know for certain until more tests in the summer. Despite the uncertainty, I feel good. Chipper, in fact.”
