All is not well in the Labour party. Diane Abbott has launched an attack on the Prime Minister over his behaviour towards her during the Frank Hester racism row. The Labour MP for Hackney North has told the Beeb that she felt Sir Keir Starmer treated her like a ‘non-person’ following the Tory donor fallout, that her suspension from Labour was a ‘move against me’ and also revealed she had been offered a deal via a ‘third party’ to stand down ahead of the election.
In March it emerged that a prominent Tory donor had told colleagues that looking at Abbott makes ‘you just want to hate all black women because she’s there’ and that ‘she should be shot’. Hester apologised for his ‘rude’ remarks, but denied charges of racism. Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Abbott has opened up about the row, telling presenters that the revelations made her feel like she may be in danger, before pointing to the murders of MPs Jo Cox and Sir David Amess: ‘One of the reasons it made me frightened is two MPs have been killed in recent years’. The comments made by Hester, Abbott raged, ‘wind up a certain sort of nutcase and it makes you more vulnerable’ – and yet, she lamented, Starmer ‘never reached out to me personally, and did treat me as a non-person’.
It’s not the first time Abbott has slammed her own side. She wrote in March that ‘sadly, racism in politics is not just a matter for any one political party’, hitting out at ‘how abusive senior Labour party officials were’ about her in WhatsApp chats. Turning the guns on the Labour lot on Newsnight this week, Abbott also opened up about her suspension from the party over alleged antisemitism. The Hackney North MP insisted that party officials were preparing to ‘get rid of me altogether as an MP’ as she was ‘one of the last leading left-wingers in the parliamentary Labour party…’ Don’t hold back, eh?
Abbott went on to claim she was offered a deal via a ‘third party’ that included restoring the Labour whip to her as long as she promised to stand down ahead of the election. ‘The idea was that they would restore the whip in the morning. And then I would stand down in the afternoon; not the next day, not the next week, but in the afternoon. And I felt that was designed to humiliate me.’ Crikey. At the time, it had been suggested that the Corbyn ally would be ‘barred’ from representing Labour in the election – though Starmer rowed back at the last minute, insisting the veteran politician was ‘free to stand’.
Back on Starmer, Abbott fumed:
I think that Keir Starmer wanted to finish his clear-out of the left in the parliamentary Labour party and by writing a very ill-advised letter, I gave him the opportunity to move against me. And I think what they were trying to do was to string out and string out the investigation. So when a general election is around the corner, they could just move me out of the way as a Labour candidate because I wouldn’t be in the parliamentary Labour party, and they would parachute in someone else.
Well, well, well. Talk about trouble in paradise…
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