Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Corbyn cannot just condemn the abuse of those he is friends with

Jeremy Corbyn was generous to the Shadow Cabinet in his conference speech, especially to Diane Abbott, who had a terrible election campaign personally, suffering from problems with her diabetes and horrendous racist and misogynist abuse. The Labour leader led a standing ovation to the Shadow Home Secretary, followed by a rendition of ‘happy birthday’.

He told the hall that ‘the campaign by the Tories and their loyal media was nasty and personal. It fuelled abuse online and no one was the target of that more than Diane Abbott.’

Let’s just recall the abuse of Diane Abbott during the election campaign. She said she had been called a ‘n***** bitch’, sent rape and death threats and received 45 per cent of all abusive tweets sent to female MPs during the election campaign. She made mistakes during the campaign, but even incompetence doesn’t merit abuse. Diane Abbott did not deserve the abuse she got. No-one deserves abuse, even if they are disagreeable.

Abbott clearly knows this, because she called on Labour supporters not to abuse Laura Kuenssberg after it emerged that the BBC’s political editor has been given a bodyguard so she can do her job safely at the Labour conference. Abbott said: ‘It is wrong. Laura is doing a job, I may not always like how she does the job every time, but it is her job and why – just because she is a woman journalist – does she get that level of abuse? It’s wrong.’

This articulates perfectly what a zero tolerance approach to abuse should look like. There is never any room for ‘well, she deserved it’, though that sentiment remains so prevalent in our culture. Rape victims are still blamed for wearing lingerie or drinking too heavily. Women whose husbands abuse them are suspected of having done something to provoke the ‘crime of passion’, including not having left their abuser.

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