Diane Abbott: Labour ‘wants me out' after second suspension

Independent

6 days ago

Diane Abbott has been suspended from the Labour Party for a second time after repeating comments about racism for which she had previously apologised.
The Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP said the Labour leadership 'wants me out' and that her comments in a BBC interview released this week were 'factually correct'.
It comes a day after Sir Keir Starmer stripped the whip from four Labour MPs for persistent breaches of discipline.
Ms Abbott, the longest-serving female MP in the Commons, lost the whip and had a lengthy stint sitting as an independent after she suggested in 2023 that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people experience prejudice, but not racism.
She apologised for those remarks at the time and was eventually readmitted to the party just in time to stand as a Labour candidate in the 2024 general election.
But in a BBC interview released this week, she said she did not regret the incident.
'Diane Abbott has been administratively suspended from the Labour Party, pending an investigation. We cannot comment further while this investigation is ongoing,' a Labour spokesperson said.
Ms Abbott posted a clip of her BBC interview after news of her suspension emerged. She did not respond to a request for comment, but gave a statement to BBC Newsnight.
'It is obvious this Labour leadership wants me out.
'My comments in the interview with James Naughtie were factually correct, as any fair-minded person would accept,' she said.
The original comments in 2023 were in a letter to The Observer newspaper, and she withdrew the remarks the same day and apologised 'for any anguish caused'.
In the interview with BBC Radio 4's Reflections programme, she was asked whether she looked back on the incident with regret.
'No, not at all,' she said.
'Clearly, there must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism, because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don't know.
'You don't know unless you stop to speak to them or you're in a meeting with them.
'But if you see a black person walking down the street, you see straight away that they're black. There are different types of racism.'
She added: 'I just think that it's silly to try and claim that racism which is about skin colour is the same as other types of racism.'
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner was asked if she was disappointed by the comments.
'I was. There's no place for antisemitism in the Labour Party, and obviously the Labour Party has processes for that,' she told The Guardian newspaper.
'Diane had reflected on how she'd put that article together, and said that 'was not supposed to be the version', and now to double down and say 'Well, actually I didn't mean that. I actually meant what I originally said', I think is a real challenge.'
Ms Abbott entered Parliament in 1987 and holds the honorary title of Mother of the House.
Her suspension comes in the same week that Sir Keir carried out a purge of troublesome backbenchers in a bid to assert authority over the party.
Rachael Maskell, who spearheaded plans to halt the Government's welfare reforms, had the whip suspended alongside Neil Duncan-Jordan, Brian Leishman and Chris Hinchliff.
Party sources said the decision to suspend the whip was taken as a result of persistent breaches of discipline rather than a single rebellion.