Diane Abbott

You can be both intellectually intelligent and also remarkably stupid.

While DA may be oxbridge she rarely has knowledge of government statistics, which is actually her JOB!

She comes out with the most hideous "misremembered" numbers when asked. When announcing a Labour policy on policing and crime she had no idea of the costs and "guessed" a number which was first 3000 times too low, then when questioned came in with a number that would be around a 10th of the actual cost.

This is not the first time she has come out with racist tropes.... She has form for being anti-Semitic. She has no business being in politics.

In a completely genuine way, what are you talking about? I don’t understand your post at all. Are you saying Irish immigrants shouldn’t have moved to England because it made their kids feel culturally homeless?

Absolutely excellent post!

Another thing about sharp elbowed first generation immigrants they don't have the capability or spend any time considering the impact of their decisions on the second generation offspring who get called 'plastic paddy' feel that they don't belong anywhere, they become homeless, as in my case the English didn't see me as being one of them and the Irish didn't see me as being one of them, both telling me to go home, where, in the middle of the Irish sea?

The colonisation of women is similar and I can see why Stonewall say it's the same as racism. You have Kirstie Allsop types like Labour who are well to do telling women to 'be kind' and you have lesbians saying hang on we don't want our culture changed, we want biological women only we don't want to take these male lebians in, in every way you can and you are our charity who are supposed to put our needs first as lesbians who founded you with resources to represent us.

I wasn't around in the 1960s to know what way my Dad was behaving, my whole life he has been an arsehole and if English people came across him without understanding context or understanding context, I am not surprised they were not liking the Irish.

Maybe those in the 1960s were behaving as the equivalent at the time , how current Albanins are - who take up is it half of the UK prison space? Maybe at the time to 1960s English there were lots refusing to accept English culture and pissing people off walking around as my Narcissistic Dad does as if the English as beneath him and there to be exploited, as he exploited me. You have to also think what type of person will leave their life in their home country to start a new one in anothercountry, yes poverty or climate change, also there will be many as in my Dad's case he ran out of people at home to exploit so he needed to move to a big city to find a steady strem.

Having a degree from anywhere doesn't prove commonsense or emotional intelligence or empathy. I suspect that she lacks more than one of those. I know plenty of people with degrees and professional qualifications of various types who lack one or more of those qualities. Sometimes it doesn't matter, but in public life I think it does.

Agree but he only has a majority of 14.5k - DA's is more than twice that!

Ffs, she’s not “thick”. She’s got a degree from Cambridge. Where’s yours from @BellatrixLestrangesHeatedCurlers?

I can't be arsed to care about it. MPs have said and written worse things. Abbott is thick, we knew this.

I'm always astonished that anyone would vote for Jacob Rees-Mogg, but clearly people do.

I bet they would.

Weird isn't? Safe seat, high number of British Jews voting for her among others or are her voters also "thick" ? all 40,000 of them? over 33k more than the 2nd placed candidate got....

Yes lots of people voted for her. I bet they wouldn’t again, not after this.

I said at the beginning of this thread that I experienced racism from the English and Irish.

I noted Katherine Birbalsingh say everyone is a little racist.

The Irish have a British patron Saint they took as a slave.

The Irish started off minding their own business in their own country, eventually due to genocide and poverty like others they began to travel.

Currently those in Ireland who never moved away - don't like legal immigration, they may be traumatised from historical illegal immigration or just not like other culturesanf want to prrserve their own. It's interesting to watch and think about.

Maybe humans just don't like others coming into their country trying to change the culture and in some cases thieving things, land etc?

As has been said in the 1960s when my parents came here they were treated badly. The thing is my Irish imigant Dad is a sharp elbowed Irish supremacist who looked down on his host country, he wanted the Irish culture in England and had no respect for his host country he just wanted to exploit their resources as they had the Irish.

I have spoken to other second generations from other countries who told me the same about their first generation immigrant parents. Maybe it was just a coincidence.

That's why I think Katherine is correct.

What part of she doubled her majority in 2010 is so difficult to understand?

The film 'in the name of the Father' covers this with high quality acting.

Some seats are safe, whatever the strengths/weaknesses of the MP.

My seat swings like a pendulum so you can never get of the darn canvassers!

Irish children had to learn in secret behind hedges as the 'thick irish' were outlawed education by the visiting British - in Ireland the country the Irish owned and lived.

She isn’t lucky she’s in a safe seat, that seat is safe because she made it so. She doubled the majority in 2010 on an increased turn out. A lot of that majority is based on personal loyalty as she seems to be an excellent constituency MP.

What she wrote was appalling and she deserves to lose the whip but it’s wrong not to recognise her achievements, one of which is to be the first black woman to be elected as an MP.

Weird isn't? Safe seat, high number of British Jews voting for her among others or are her voters also "thick" ? all 40,000 of them? over 33k more than the 2nd placed candidate got.... she must be a very good MP for such support.

She gets over half of all abuse directed at MPs of all parties, which you are just adding too.

BUT i'm pleased she has had the whip suspended and that she may well be kicked out of the 'party, what she wrote is indefensible.

What i don't like is that the high standards so many on here hold the Labour party too, do not apply to the Tory party.

The main point for Labour is that she is a liability because she seems so darn thick. This is by no means the first time she has mucked up. Lucky for her she’s in that safe seat.

Of course fight racism, but to do so by being racist to another historically targeted group? Er….

And as for the apology! It was a “first draft” - Well, you still wrote it though!

DA has let herself and her party down here, seeking to downgrade racism experienced by other ethnicities doesn't help the anti-black racism fight. And at a time where KS is trying to eliminate the antiisemetic perception of the labour party and make it electable.

But urgh, I do feel that there is a certain glee from some commentators at seeing an opportunity to legitimately attack her.

I am both horrified and sorry that this thread has flushed out so much antisemitism on MN

So am I, though sadly not suprised when we consider the tumbleweed on most threads purely about the persecution of jews as opposed to this one, where the footfall's ballooned because a black woman's involved

As PPs have pointed out HQ do very little about antisemitism on here, but then they're also part of the metropolitan chatterati seized by the endless tropes about Palestine. Unfortunately balanced facts don't tend to be welcomed among such groups because they're just too wedded to the ideology, and so the antisemitism continues

@Coffeeandbourbons

what is your objective though? Is it to score points on who is most disadvantaged or is it to remove racism and it’s impact on people?

Because they both require very different strategies and in order to achieve the latter we need to treat racism at its source - the belief some people are better than others based on arbitrary factors.

The only way to get this happening is to get everyone on board and minimising other peoples perspective ( exactly what you have done) simply distorts the argument and leads us down these paths where we get caught up in the detail rather than seeing the whole picture.

I had written earlier a lengthy post about a conversation I had recently with a professional woman who spent the whole time criticising Irish travellers - I had to walk away as I knew the other person in the conversation had traveller heritage and didn’t know what to say.

It is invisible largely as people in those communities don’t talk about it so much and you don’t hear about it in the media.

I could go on but so many things but I suspect your mind is made up - from your perspective you will see things a certain way but move slightly to a more objective, less personal perspective and you can start to find other ways of seeing things.

It really wasn't that long ago that multiple Irish people were wrongly imprisoned in this country - for a duration of 17 years in one instance, 14 in another - simply for being Irish and the need for scapegoats. They had (wrongful) confessions literally tortured out of them.

Downplaying Irish fears of racism is gross.

Racism is racism.

The actions that come from racism are what causes the fear but the hatred based on skin colour is the same no matter what direction it comes from or what direction it is pointed to.

Or would you prefer it if some racism is left unchallenged until it escalates?

If uncomfortable truths aren't discussed openly it leads to bubbling resentment which only serves to escalate the situation. If you don't acknowledge things are happening you'll run the risk of aggravating racial tensions even further. It's also pretty patronising to say because someone has more melanin in their skin they're not capable of hateful acts. Every human being of every creed and colour is capable of hate.