Diane Abbott given Labour whip again amid claims occasion blocking her from election
Diane Abbott’s political future is hanging in the balance amid claims Labour were seeking to stop her standing in July’s election.
Labour withdrew the whip from the long-standing MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington in April 2023, after she suggested Jewish, Irish and Traveller people experienced prejudice, but not racism. She has since apologised, and is understood to have attended an anti-Semitism awareness course in February.
And it’s understood she was given the party whip back on Tuesday afternoon.
But Keir Starmer today refused to say whether she would be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate in the election. Asked about the investigation finishing in December, the Labour leader said: “The process overall is obviously a little longer than the fact-finding exercise.
“But in the end, this is a matter that will have to be resolved by the National Executive Committee and they’ll do that in due course.”
The Times reported the party leadership had concluded she would not be allowed to stand under Labour’s banner. And it was claimed party figures were attempting to negotiate a way to restore the party whip to her without her being a candidate – either through her agreeing to retire or being offered a seat in the House of Lords.
On Friday, Deputy leader Angela Rayner told the Mirror she wanted to see a resolution to the row. She said: “I would like to see a resolution, because I don’t think Diane Abbott’s career should end in that way. We’ve had our ding-dongs between us, but there’s no question to me of her advocacy and her passion to make lives better.
“I think it’d be really regrettable if her career ends without this being resolved. That’s not something I’m in control of, I don’t have the full detail. There’s a full investigation and I’m not a part of that. I don’t get involved in complaints. But I would hope to see her career in a better place. I don’t want her career to end under those circumstances.”
Ms Abbott, who has been an MP since 1987, has said the process “has EVERYTHING to do with” Sir Keir. The veteran MP was suspended after she responded to an Observer article headlined: “Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated.”
She wrote in a letter to the title: “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.” Ms Abbott later said she wished to “wholly and unreservedly withdraw my remarks and disassociate myself from them”.
