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Labour Party Conference: Tom Watson speech / Closing ceremony; ENGLAND: East Sussex: Brighton: INT Tom Watson MP (Deputy Labour Leader) conference speech SOT **CHECK DELIVERY AGAINST TRANSCRIPT** - Good afternoon Conference. It's been a good week. It's been quite a different experience. I think I'm going to like being your Deputy Leader. As Jeremy said yesterday, we've done 37 events together, though we decided not to gatecrash the Labour students' disco like I normally do.This is a great gathering of the Labour clan. / Unlike the Lib Dem conference last week, with their 8 MPs, which could have been held in a broom cupboard. Or, as the Tories call it, the servants' quarters. The entire Lib Dem parliamentary party can now fit into two minicabs. More people joined Labour in a month than the total membership of the Lib Dems. That's a fact. 2,200 joined yesterday alone. / Did you see the Lib Dem conference in Bournemouth? The slogan was hashtag Lib Dem Fightback. But the only coverage they could get was talking about Jeremy and Labour. / I did go too far though when I compared the Lib Dems to a Banarama tribute band. Some people were angry, and I accept that I crossed the line. What I said was demeaning, unjustified and wrong. Siobhan, Sara, Keren – I should never have compared your tribute acts to that useless bunch of lying sellouts, the Lib Dems and I'm sorry. /And as for the Tories, within hours of Jeremy being elected, that master of understatement, the Prime Minister, tweeted: "The Labour Party is now a threat to our national security, our economic security and your family's security." ./ This from a Tory Government that axed 20,000 service personnel, doubled public debt to £1.5 trillion and increased child poverty. So we'll take no lessons from Cameron and Osborne. I want to thank Jeremy Corbyn and Harriet Harman. / Harriet's served our party in Parliament since I was at school. She championed the cause of women more consistently than any British polit...