Diane Abbott should lose the Labour whip
It's tragic that the first black woman to be elected to the UK Parliament will likely see an end to her career as a result of ignorance.
Diane Abbott looks likely to have secured the suspension of the Labour whip this morning. A letter authored by her in The Observer (‘Racism is black and white’) is quickly causing uproar as it does the rounds. Amongst other things, it compares the historic racism which the Jewish people have faced to prejudice experienced by people with red hair.
Political Editor for The Sun Harry Cole drew attention to the letter this morning, stating that she suggests “Jewish people do not face racism” but merely “prejudice akin to being a redhead”.
But her statement, in referencing historical events such as the slave trade and South African apartheid, actually goes far beyond that assertion in a rather disturbing way; in drawing upon those events and bringing the Jewish community into them - by pointing out that they were never directed to sit at the back of buses in pre-civil rights America, for instance - she is ignoring the historic persecution that Jewish people have faced. In making such a comparison without mentioning events like the holocaust, she may as well be saying that, so far as she’s concerned, they never happened.
Starmer now has no alternative but to remove the whip. Abbott and other members of the Socialist Campaign Group of Labour MPs have been warned before, most notably when they signed a letter criticising NATO in the immediate aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. They withdrew their signatures on that occasion and so were able to retain the whip - but it will be very difficult for Abbott to withdraw her letter now that it has circulated in print in a national newspaper. And given Starmer’s response to Jeremy Corbyn’s behaviour, she can hardly claim that she wouldn’t have understood the potential repercussions of her actions.
The Labour left have been up in arms over Corbyn’s suspension since it occurred. I have little sympathy for them, and certainly none for Corbyn himself. Though he may see himself as a flag waver for the working class, he himself was born into immense privilege, and has brought his removal from the PLP entirely upon himself in making ignorant and insulting statements about the party’s handling of antisemitism whilst he was leader - not least the comments which led to his suspension in which he stated that the problem was “dramatically overstated for political reasons”.
Running the Labour Party into the ground - giving them their worst electoral defeat since 1935 and reversing the century-long trend of an opposition party’s path to power - was seemingly not enough; he has steadfastly refused to accept these electoral failures alongside the moral failures of the party’s handling of antisemitism which happened on his watch.
As for the fate of Diane Abbott… I’m just very sad. Jokes about her arithmetic abilities in recent years have obscured her considerable achievements and capabilities as a parliamentarian.
It is tragic that Abbott, who broke the glass ceiling to become the first black woman elected as an MP, is now likely to see her parliamentary career come to an end as the result of such ignorance.
Update: Diane Abbott has issued a statement seeking to retract her remarks:
https://twitter.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1650072333527252994