Diane Abbott says it is 'silly' to claim anti-Semitism is as bad as racism faced by black people as she reignites row that got her suspended by Labour
The veteran backbencher used a BBC interview to say she had no regrets about her 2023 claim that anti-Semitism and anti-Traveller discrimination was not as bad as prejudice based on skin colour.
And she reiterated the opinions aired in a letter to the Observer two years ago that led to her losing the whip and making a public apology.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4's Reflections programme, 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 (what they are).
'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.
'I don't know why people would say that.'
Her reiteration of her views will heap pressure on Sir Keir Starmer to take action against her as he did in 2023.
A party spokesman said: 'There is no place for anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
'We take these comments incredibly seriously, and will assess them in line with the Labour Party's rules and procedures.'
It comes a day after he stripped the whip from four leftwing labour backbenchers for 'persistent breaches of party discipline' while blocking his welfare reforms.
The Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP was suspended by the Labour Party in 2023 after suggested that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people experience 'prejudice' but 'are not all their lives subject to racism'.
'They undoubtedly experience prejudice,' Ms Abbott wrote in the Observer.
'This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.
'It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice.
'But they are not all their lives subject to racism. In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus.
'In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.'
She later issued a statement to 'wholly and unreservedly withdraw my remarks and disassociate myself from them' as she blamed drafting 'errors'.
But Labour pushed ahead with action against the ex-shadow minister in any case.
Ms Abbott issued a public apology in 2023 to 'wholly and unreservedly withdraw my remarks and disassociate myself from them'
She was given the whip back before the 2024 election but was at the centre of a fresh party row then when attempts were made to stop her from running for re-election in her north London seat.
She eventually was allowed to stand as a Labour candidate and won with a much reduced majority of 15,000 in one of the party's safest seats.
The longest-serving female MP in the Commons, who entered Parliament in 1987, told the BBC last night she got a 'bit weary' about people labelling her anti-Semetic and said she had 'spent a lifetime fighting racism of all kinds'.
She said she was 'grateful' to be a Labour MP but was sure the party leadership had been 'trying to get me out'.
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