Hackney MP Diane Abbott suspended by Labour again following racism comments
Diane Abbott. Photograph: UK Parliament/Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)
Diane Abbott has been suspended by the Labour party for a second time after defending the remarks that led to her original ban.
The Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP lost the Labour whip in 2023 after she wrote to the Observer to suggest people from Jewish, Irish and Traveller communities had not been subjected to racism “all their lives”.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the comments as “antisemitic”.
Abbott was eventually reinstated by the party in May 2024.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Reflections earlier today, she was asked if she stood by her remarks.
“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,” she said.
“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. I don’t know why people would say that.”
Labour today suspended Abbott again while it investigates, meaning she is now an independent MP.
Before the suspension was announced, Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner was asked by the Guardian if she was disappointed by Abbott’s words.
She told the paper: “I was. There’s no place for antisemitism in the Labour party, and obviously the Labour party has processes for that.
“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.”
In her letter to the Observer in 2023, Abbott wrote: “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.
“In apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote. And at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.”
The letter was a response to a comment that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from racism in the UK.
Following a backlash, Abbott later retracted her words in a statement on social media.
She said: “I wish to wholly and unreservedly withdraw my remarks and disassociate myself from them.
“The errors arose in an initial draft being sent. But there is no excuse, and I wish to apologise for any anguish caused.
“Racism takes many forms, and it is completely undeniable that Jewish people have suffered its monstrous effects, as have Irish people, Travellers, and many others.
“Once again, I would like to apologise publicly for the remarks and any distress caused as a result of them.”
Abbott has been the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987.
Her office has been approached for comment.
Why Is saying that black people are subject to lifelong racism controversial, it is obviously true?
So the Labour/Hackney Party is now so desperate to manage its image that it throws a veteran MP under the bus for speaking an uncomfortable truth?
I’m not even the same background as Diane Abbott, but nothing she said was racist. She pointed out something many of us already know: that racism based on visible skin colour operates differently, more persistently, and often more brutally. That’s not an attack on anyone else—it’s a reality.
Instead of engaging with that, this article twists her words into controversy, while the party acts like context doesn’t exist. The hypocrisy is staggering. They’d rather punish someone for telling the truth than risk looking momentarily uncomfortable.
This isn’t anti-racism. It’s theatre.
This has got nothing to do with, "stamping out racism" as Starmer puts it. If it was he wouldn't have used Enoch Powell's words about Britain becoming, "an island of Strangers" in a recent speech.