RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Give me Diane Abbott over Starmer’s cynical spivs

Back in the dim and distant when I used to do a bit of TV and radio, she was always game for a laugh. And her laugh was infectious.

Although she was a trailblazer, the first black woman MP and a genuine role model for aspiring politicians from minority backgrounds, she never took herself took herself too seriously.

Unlike some of her more intolerant, ideologically-pure colleagues in the Labour Party, who thought Right-wing reptiles like me should be avoided at all costs, she never ducked a challenge or refused to be interviewed, even when it was pretty obvious that she didn’t have the foggiest idea what she was talking about.

Don’t get me wrong. Despite the ditzy reputation Diane has acquired over the years, she’s a long way from daft, having studied at Newnham College, Cambridge, where one of her teachers was the fragrant Mary Archer.

That was something I only discovered live on air when she appeared as a panellist on my late-night London Weekend Television show alongside Mary’s husband Jeffrey, who teased her unmercifully. She thought it was hilarious.

Diane never missed an opportunity to plug her achievements on behalf of the people of Hackney, East London, who sent her to Parliament in 1987.

On one show, I had to warn her in advance that every time she mentioned Hackney, I’d ring a bell. In the first ten minutes, I had to ring it at least a dozen times, much to everyone’s amusement.

She was a perfect guest, going on to be a fixture on the long-running Andrew Neil BBC One politics programme, This Week, part of a Hackney Empire double act with Michael Portillo.

Her tendency to open her mouth before engaging her brain has often landed her in trouble. Most politicians confronted with a difficult question dissemble or change the subject. Diane may ‘um and ah’, but she usually blurts out something, however incoherent.

Brain fog frequently drops her in it. Among the many incisive interviews my old mate Nick Ferrari has conducted on his LBC breakfast show, a couple come to mind immediately — both with leading Labour women.

Diane was roundly ridiculed after Ferrari skewered her over the cost of Labour’s plans to put thousands of extra coppers on the street. She could have claimed she didn’t know the exact figure and promised to get back to him. But she ploughed on regardless.

Having failed to do her homework, she said that each extra officer would work out about approximately £30 a head — or it might have been 30 bob, I can’t remember.

To be charitable, she was trying to give an honest answer. It didn’t come out like that and she was kicked from pillar to post, with justification.

Yet compare and contrast her response with that of Pixie Balls-Cooper (aka Yvette Cooper) when questioned by Ferrari over the migrant crisis.

Pixie, you may recall, hit the headlines when she promised to take in a family of Syrian refugees during the war in that country. The weeks and months passed with no sign of any displaced persons turning up at one of the two beautiful homes Pixie shared with her husband and former Labour front-bencher Ed Balls.

Ferrari asked reasonably when she would be welcoming the Syrians to Chez Balls-Cooper. Pixie bluffed, blustered, blamed Call Me Dave and, preposterously, claimed she couldn’t take anyone in because she hadn’t had proper foster parent training.

Not to put too fine a point on it, she told porkies. This wasn’t just a car crash interview, it was a multi-vehicle motorway pile-up.

Yet today, lemon-sucking Pixie is nailed on to be our next Home Secretary in Starmer’s government and Diane Abbott has been cast into the outer darkness.

Not that I’m claiming Abbott would make a better Home Secretary, which she would have been if her ex-boyfriend Jeremy Corbyn had become Prime Minister.

I’ve always thought she was an exemplary constituency MP who added hugely to the gaiety of the nation, but in a perfect world I’d never allow her anywhere near the levers of power.

For the past 13 months, she’s been under investigation by the party after sending an incendiary letter to the Observer alleging that Jews, Travellers and the Irish had never faced the same kind of racism as blacks.

Only she knows what possessed her to write such offensive drivel. It’s the kind of thing she might have blurted out on the wireless, without thinking it through, but this time she committed it to paper.

(Incidentally, heaven knows what possessed the editors of the Observer to publish it. Maybe they thought it would play well with their Hamas-loving readers in North London.)

I understand absolutely why British Jews were horrified by her remarks, not least the orthodox community in her own constituency, and I wouldn’t try to excuse her. But, for the record, I don’t believe she’s an anti-Semite, unlike that Islamist stooge Corbyn.

She has also been on the receiving end of the most vile racist abuse herself since getting elected in 1987. That’s a plea of mitigation, not a get-out-of-jail card. But it needs to be taken into consideration.

Immediately after the letter was published she issued an apology, no doubt realising the distress her crass remarks had caused. Starmer could have either accepted it or dumped her on the spot.

But dragging out an inquiry — what was there to investigate? — and handing down sentence after over a year purely for imagined electoral expediency speaks more about Starmer’s slippery cynicism than any offence on her part.

The way in which Labour’s leader vacillated yesterday made Pixie’s evasion over Syrian refugees look like a masterclass in honesty and transparency.

Perhaps Starmer thinks crushing Diane Abbott makes him look strong and ruthless. Sorry, guv, it just makes you look weak, opportunistic and vindictive.

I haven’t seen Diane for a few years, but thought she looked diminished and shell-shocked when she addressed a rally outside Hackney Town Hall on Wednesday night. The old joie de vivre was conspicuous by its absence.

Maybe 37 years of service have taken their toll and it is time to call it a day. But that must be her decision, not Starmer’s.

What was obvious was that she still commands immense support among the voters of Hackney, who gave her a 33,000 majority last time round. They should decided her future, not the political spivs surrounding Starmer searching for a cheap headline.

My favourite memory of Diane is the time we both turned up at Gordon Brown’s wedding reception. (I’m not sure why I was invited, although I am an old mate of Gordon’s brother-in-law.)

She gave me a big hug before standing back and saying: ‘Hang on, what are you doing here? You’re not New Labour.’

‘Neither are you,’ I replied. Cue peals of infectious laughter.

Sadly, shamefully, she’s not part of pretend puritan Oliver Starmer’s New Model Army, either.