The Tories have had a tough week trying to find their line on comments made by their biggest donor Frank Hester. But the Labour party hasn’t escaped unscathed either. Independent MP Diane Abbott has taken her side of the story to the papers — and delivered a blistering attack on her former party.
Abbott revealed in the Guardian that she had been planning to ask the Prime Minister about Frank Hester’s remarks in the Commons. But despite attempting to get the Speaker’s attention almost, er, 50 times, Abbott wasn’t successful. Turning to the column pages, she described how she had been ‘upset but not surprised’ by Hester’s comments and slammed the Tories for playing ’the race card’. Then she turned the guns on Labour…
‘Sadly, racism in politics is not just a matter for any one political party,’ Abbott noted. Referencing a Starmer-commissioned report from 2022 that examined allegations of racism and sexism in the Labour party, she wrote about ‘how abusive senior Labour party officials were’ about her in WhatsApp chats. She continued:
The report went on to point out that the criticisms of me by these senior Labour staff were ‘not simply a harsh response to perceived poor performance – they are expressions of visceral disgust, drawing (consciously or otherwise) on racist tropes, and they bear little resemblance to the criticisms of white male MPs elsewhere in the messages’. They did not actually call for me to be shot but the tenor was not dissimilar to what Hester said. However, to this day none of the individuals concerned have apologised to me, and the Labour party has not apologised to me personally.
Currently an Independent MP, Abbott lost the Labour whip last year after she suggested Jewish, Irish and Traveller people had never been ‘subject to racism’. There have been calls for Labour to lift her suspension, though the investigation into the MP’s conduct remains ongoing. Abbott’s writing suggests an olive branch could be extended, concluding that it will ‘be both sad and strange’ if she was thrown out of the party for ‘an eight-line letter’. But, as her column revealed, tensions between the Labour party and the woman who was once one of their longest-serving MPs remain fraught…
Comments