- Friday, March 14, 2025
No decision has been taken to bar Abbott, Labour leader Keir Starmer told reporters on the campaign trail.
By: India Weekly
A ROW broke out within the UK Opposition Labour Party ranks on Wednesday (29) as conflicting versions emerged regarding the electoral prospects of the country’s first black woman member of parliament after an internal disciplinary procedure.
Diane Abbott, first elected to Parliament in 1987 as MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington in east London, claimed she had been barred from seeking re-election from the seat as a Labour candidate.
It came after her suspension was lifted this week following an investigation over her controversial remarks about the levels of racism faced by different communities.
Read: Sunak, Starmer to face off in election debate on June 4
“Naturally, I am delighted to have the Labour whip restored and to be a member of the PLP (Parliamentary Labour Party),” Abbott, 70, said in a post on X.
“Thank you to all those who supported me along the way. I will be campaigning for a Labour victory. But I am very dismayed that numerous reports suggest I have been barred as a candidate,” she said.
https://x.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1795740459085750561
Amid anger from her supporters within the party, reporters asked Labour Leader Keir Starmer if the 70-year-old veteran MP had been barred as a party candidate in the July 4 general election.
Read: Sunak’s surprise election unlikely to produce a surprise result
“No, that’s not true. No decision has been taken to bar Diane Abbott. The process that we were going through ended with the restoration of the whip the other day,” Starmer told reporters on the campaign trail.
British prime minister Rishi Sunak also waded into the row, saying the Opposition must “clear up” issues related to Abbott.
“The Labour Party has been telling everybody this investigation into Diane Abbott is ongoing, it now appears it concluded months ago,” he said. Labour had launched an investigation in April last year after Abbott wrote in the Observer newspaper that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people “undoubtedly experience prejudice” which she said is “similar to racism”.
But she added, “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.”
Abbott apologised and withdrew her remarks shortly after they were published. Labour’s National Executive Committee (NEC) issued her with a “formal warning” for “engaging in conduct that was in the opinion of the NEC, prejudicial and grossly detrimental to the Labour Party”.
It said it expected her to undertake an “online, e-learning module”, which a source told the BBC was a two-hour antisemitism awareness course. Abbott is an ally of the party’s former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who was suspended as a Labour MP in 2020 for saying the scale of antisemitism within Labour’s ranks had been “dramatically overstated” by his opponents.
He has since confirmed that he will stand as an Independent candidate against his former party and contest the Islington North seat that he has held since 1983 on July 4.
The row of candidates comes as the Labour Party entrenched its lead over the governing Conservatives by 27 points, according to a YouGov poll for Sky News.
The Great Britain poll, which was conducted on Monday (27) and Tuesday (28) in the first week of campaigning since Sunak announced the election, surveyed 2,128 adults and put Labour on 47 per cent, the Tories on 20 per cent, far-right Reform on 12 per cent, the Liberal Democrats on nine per cent and the Greens on seven per cent.
(PTI)
