Keir Starmer admits he isn’t spoken to Diane Abbott since election row

Sir Keir Starmer today admitted he had not spoken to Diane Abbott since the furious row over whether she could stand for Labour at the general election.

The Labour leader last week faced a huge backlash after it was claimed Ms Abbott would be blocked from standing for re-election in her north London constituency.

But Sir Keir bowed to pressure and later confirmed the 70-year-old, who was Britain’s first black female MP, would be ‘free’ to run as a Labour candidate on 4 July.

The latest bout of Labour infighting has also seen claims Sir Keir is staging a wider ‘purge’ of left-wing candidates ahead of the general election.

The party’s ruling National Executive Committee (NEC), which is stacked with allies of Sir Keir, is due to meet this afternoon to rubber-stamp Labour’s candidate list.

The row over Ms Abbott’s candidacy threatened to reopen when she branded Sir Keir a ‘liar’ in a swiftly-deleted social media post on Sunday evening.

But Labour officials told the Guardian the NEC was likely to ignore the post and press ahead with Ms Abbott’s re-selection as a Labour candidate at today’s meeting.

Sir Keir Starmer today admitted he had not spoken to Diane Abbott since the furious row over whether she could stand for Labour at the general election

The Labour leader last week faced a huge backlash after it was claimed Ms Abbott would be blocked from standing for re-election in her north London constituency

Sir Keir spoke to a lifelong Tory voter during a visit to the Bridge Cafe in Bolton, Greater Manchester, this morning

A party source said: ‘It will hopefully be a very short and uneventful NEC meeting. We need to put this behind us.’

Sir Keir was quizzed about whether he had spoken to Ms Abbott while speaking to broadcasters at an election campaign event in Bolton this morning.

He said: ‘We dealt with the Diane Abbott issue, I made the position clear last week when I said she was free to run for the election.

‘She’s one of the candidates that we now put before the electorate. We’ve got a very good team to put before the country.’ 

Pressed again on whether he had spoken to Ms Abbott directly since the row over her re-selection, Sir Keir added: ‘I have spoken to Diane two or three months ago.

‘My team have obviously been speaking to her, but that decision is taken, that’s clear.

‘The question now before the country is about the decision, the choice, that will fall to be made on July 4, which is continuing with this chaos and division or turning the page and starting to rebuild the country with Labour.’

Sir Keir also dodged questions over reports that seven councillors in Slough had quit Labour over the party’s treatment of Ms Abbott, Faiza Shaheen and its stance on Gaza.

Ms Shaheen, known as the ‘Chingford Corbynite’, had been preparing to take on former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith in his Chingford and Woodford Green seat.

But she was dramatically blocked by Labour officials from running for the party in the constituency.

Asked about the reported resignation of councillors from Labour, Sir Keir said this morning:  ‘Across the country we’ve got brilliant Labour teams out in every constituency, fighting for votes in this general election.

‘We’re in good form, we’re making a positive argument about the choice before the country.

‘I’m really pleased that the Prime Minister has called an election because we’ve been waiting for this, we’ve been working for this for a very, very long time.’

Along with the rows over Ms Abbott and Ms Shaheen, Lloyd Russell-Moyle – the MP for Brighton Kemptown until Parliament was dissolved for the general election – was last week blocked from standing as a Labour candidate over an allegation about his behaviour.