Diane Abbott: Labour ‘wants me out' after second suspension
It comes a day after Sir Keir Starmer stripped the whip from four Labour MPs for persistent breaches of discipline.
Ms Abbott, the longest-serving female MP in the Commons, lost the whip and had a lengthy stint sitting as an independent after she suggested in 2023 that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people experience prejudice, but not racism.
She apologised for those remarks at the time and was eventually readmitted to the party just in time to stand as a Labour candidate in the 2024 general election.
But in a BBC interview released this week, she said she did not regret the incident.
'Diane Abbott has been administratively suspended from the Labour Party, pending an investigation. We cannot comment further while this investigation is ongoing,' a Labour spokesperson said.
Ms Abbott posted a clip of her BBC interview after news of her suspension emerged. She did not respond to a request for comment, but gave a statement to BBC Newsnight.
'It is obvious this Labour leadership wants me out.
'My comments in the interview with James Naughtie were factually correct, as any fair-minded person would accept,' she said.
The original comments in 2023 were in a letter to The Observer newspaper, and she withdrew the remarks the same day and apologised 'for any anguish caused'.
In the interview with BBC Radio 4's Reflections programme, she was asked whether she looked back on the incident with regret.
'No, not at all,' she said.
'Clearly, there must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism, because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don't know.
'You don't know unless you stop to speak to them or you're in a meeting with them.
'But if you see a black person walking down the street, you see straight away that they're black. There are different types of racism.'
She added: 'I just think that it's silly to try and claim that racism which is about skin colour is the same as other types of racism.'
Diane Abbott lost the whip in April 2023 (Lucy North/PA)
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner was asked if she was disappointed by the comments.
'I was. There's no place for antisemitism in the Labour Party, and obviously the Labour Party has processes for that,' she told The Guardian newspaper.
'Diane had reflected on how she'd put that article together, and said that 'was not supposed to be the version', and now to double down and say 'Well, actually I didn't mean that. I actually meant what I originally said', I think is a real challenge.'
Ms Abbott entered Parliament in 1987 and holds the honorary title of Mother of the House.
Her suspension comes in the same week that Sir Keir carried out a purge of troublesome backbenchers in a bid to assert authority over the party.
Rachael Maskell, who spearheaded plans to halt the Government's welfare reforms, had the whip suspended alongside Neil Duncan-Jordan, Brian Leishman and Chris Hinchliff.
Party sources said the decision to suspend the whip was taken as a result of persistent breaches of discipline rather than a single rebellion.
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She was ordered to undergo an online two hour e-training module which was apparently a two-hour antisemitism awareness course. Her comments concerning the Irish and Traveller communities were not addressed. I suspect Abbott had been rather keen to clarify the comments in the Naughtie interview and didn't anticipate this reaction from Labour HQ. She has posted the excerpt from the interview that is causing all of the controversy to her X account in which she can be heard saying: 'Clearly there must be a difference between racism which is about colour, and other types of racism because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street. You don't know… but if you see a Black person walking down the street, you see straightaway that they're Black. They are different types of racism.' She added: 'I just think that it's silly to try and claim that racism which is about skin colour is the same as other types of racism.' This is a salient point. There's clearly a marked difference in how a Black person or person of colour suffers racism compared to someone who is 'white passing'. When there were riots in Southport last year, racist thugs didn't double-check the identity of the Black or Brown people they were attacking – they worked solely on the basis of skin colour. Naughtie pressed further, saying the effect is 'the same if you are, going to a synagogue on a Saturday morning and you have to have guards outside because some people might come along and want to insult you or even throw things at you'. 'That's pretty much the same as the kind of thing you describe in your book is happening to you as a Black person,' he said. 'The fact is one is a person of colour and one isn't, is neither here nor there. If you suffered it, it's still damaging.' Abbott replied: 'It is here, because you can spot that person of colour from hundreds of yards away. That is what is different.' I understand what she means – but I see why the second point she made could be construed as dismissive. The fact is, if you go to the synagogue on Shabbat and are Jewish – and have white skin – that is not going to protect you from any antisemitic attack. We've not been able to have a grown-up conversation around race in the UK for quite some time now. For me personally, I felt a significant shift around the time of the Brexit vote, Trump's first victory across the pond and Corbyn becoming leader of the Labour Party. This is when, instead of being able to simply speak about my own lived experiences, I was being called upon to compare them to others – forced to participate in some sort of 'oppression Olympics' which I hadn't trained or signed up for. I've always believed that intersectionality is the way to best understand what other people are going through. You can draw on some of your own experiences, look at the similarities and listen when they explain the difference in order to be able to empathise. What Abbott is trying to highlight here, however clumsily, is assimilation. I know many people from Jewish families who have Anglicised names and this was a deliberate choice, but it's important to point out not all of us can do this successfully. Despite many people from the Caribbean community (which I am from) having Anglicised names, it makes no difference to the racism we face. In some cases, it only delays the inevitable. I've heard plenty of stories of our people turning up to a job interview and witnessing the palpable disappointment of the panel when they realise 'Jason Davies' is actually a Black man. I deliberated long and hard on what to name my son, and in the end, I decided to give him an unmistakeably African name so people knew what they were getting – and there would be no surprises. My friend Iain decided to give his daughter an Anglicised name so that she could at least get her foot in the door, knowing that sometimes CVs and applications are thrown away just because you have a Black-sounding name. This is how early we start to worry about these things. But my experience is also different in other ways. I don't have to sit listening to people crack racist jokes because they don't realise I'm Black – that is obvious to them – yet my Jewish friends have had to listen to tasteless Holocaust jokes, because no one realises they're Jewish. Racism is often doled out due to perception. Gary Lineker, for example, has discussed being racially abused as a child because of his dark skin, despite being white; yet Meghan Markle has spoken about not suffering the level of racism growing up as she does now because people didn't realise she was half Black. Orthodox Jews are identifiable from the religious attire they wear in the same way that some Muslims are (those who wear thobes or hijabs.) But in dire circumstances, such as threat to life, these things can be removed. In Islam there is something called Taqiyya (annoyingly misused on social media) which allows you to conceal your faith in times of danger and persecution. Black people can't do this. If only Stephen Lawrence or Anthony Walker had been able to run around a corner and remove their skin in order to save their lives. The GRT (Gypsy, Roma and Traveller) community may able to walk down the street as individuals and blend in to mainstream society in a way that I can't, but that doesn't negate the horrendous levels of discrimination they face within the education system, the legislative changes and even just trying to have a drink or a meal. They are refused service and suffer crude racism in a way Abbott confidently asserts doesn't happen as overtly to Black people anymore. She said, 'they may think the same thoughts, but they know it's not acceptable to express them.' To my mind, Starmer has either made a serious mistake here, or the disrespect he has repeatedly shown Abbott and the wider Black community since the start of his leadership is set to continue. His failure to address the findings in the Forde Report (which was commissioned to examine the level of anti-Black racism and Islamophobia in the party) resulted in many leaving the party altogether. Some found a home elsewhere, while other MPs disengaged with politics altogether. The blind loyalty afforded to the Labour Party over the years since the overtly racist 1964 Smethick campaign where the Tories used the slogan: 'If you want a n****r for a neighbour, vote Labour' no longer exists. 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