Diane Abbott to be banned from standing for Labour

Not the Irish Famine again. Pitt sent relief to Ireland, despite similar hardship happening in the North of England (and across Europe as the blight was general) but when he went out of office and the Whigs replaced the Tories, they believed that famine should not be relieved by giving aid in the form of grain etc but should be solved by the market (sound familiar?) as they were strong supporters of laissez-faire economics (leave it alone to sort itself). It was Irish landowners who exported food from Ireland during the famine (i.e. not the British government - many people in England, including Queen Victoria, sent aid to Ireland) and, as you say, the deaths were not genocide as genocide must be intended, and it wasn't, the deaths were a result of government beliefs about how the world works (Adam Smith's 'invisible hand') and that if there is a demand it will be supplied so government should not intervene (sound familiar? pure Thatcherism). As to other massacres. no-one remembers the murder of Protestants - they are the wrong sort of Irish, I suppose. (My father was Irish by descent (not nationality) and my grandparents, Catholic, too. I have an Irish surname - I know about discrimination against the Irish - and when a black woman behaved towards me in a racist manner I recognised her for what she was immediately.)
Diane Abbott probably knows little of the history of the British Isles and so won't recognise the connection between red hair and Danes - who slaved all round Europe. As to red hair and the Irish, it is the result of the Irish slaving all round Europe and esp. Britain - largest slave market in Europe was Dublin - and main reason for Normans invading (Normans anti-slavery).

This is a woman who has been consistently racist. She likened anti-Semitism to being discriminated against because you have red hair (Whoopi Goldberg said something similar i.e. that the Holocaust was not racist because everyone involved was white). Abbott also said Irish and Traveller people do not suffer from discrimination as black people do. All this garbage comes from Critical Race Theory, the victim/oppressor narrative and the assumption a) that the only slave trade that EVER existed was the Atlantic trade, b) Europeans, esp. British, invented slavery and c) only black people suffer from racism and black people cannot be racist. This same narrative is fuelling the pro-Hamas marches across the Western world, championing rapists, murderers, misogynists and illegal soldiers (they wear no uniform and mix with the general population) who carried out an attack on Jewish people not seen since WWII as the oppressed (so good guys), and Israel as the oppressor (because colonials etc).
True, the Labour Party has acted despicably in not telling Abbott she could not stand as a Labour candidate at the next election, but they probably wanted to avoid the shit-storm that has now resulted - this was stupid of them btw, better earlier, before an election called, now it's going to overshadow their election campaign. They have treated Abbott badly and it fits well with their TWAW narrative and their general indifference to women. They cannot be trusted on those issues. But the Conservatives have made a complete mess of the NHS (on purpose, I think), so what is one to do?

Not to mention the British atrocities in Ireland, from the ethnic cleansing, deliberate starvation, and massacres of the Munster and Ulster Plantations, to the murderous reprisals in 1798, to the Great 'Famine' [in which food was being exported to the UK] which saw at least a million people die and two million emigrate, to name a few.

Most Irish people have been hesitant to call these 'genocides', because the legal definition requires intent to destroy a people, and in the case of the most destructive, the blight which caused the potato crop to fail repeatedly was not a deliberate act by the British.

The consequent actions/inactions, were very deliberate, and the death of a million or so 'subhuman' Irish was actually welcomed in some circles as a beneficial side-effect of the crop failure. The laissez-faire attitude of Sir Charles Trevelyan to the unspeakable horror of the famine is notorious - and in stark contrast to the smaller potato blight outbreak in Scotland, where he declared that no expense should be spared to save lives, so the disregard for human life was specifically for Irish human life.

However, since the killing in the course of a war of approx 35,000 people out of a population of approx 5m, and a worldwide population of 14m is now widely defined as a 'genocide', perhaps it's time for a reappraisal of British atrocities in Ireland, and the continuing consequences for the Irish nation and people.

I wonder has Diane Abbott ever wondered why having red hair is perceived as negative?

She isn't. You know well she isn't. It's just an excuse to keep dragging the party so far right that they are effectively Tories.

Fucking outrageous of that right wing git Starmer to ban her.

Yeah, @CwmYoy, I don't think Tories = Donald Trump.

I think it's time for her to go, her behaviour has been a bit erratic for some time.

What she wrote, as quoted above, seems more naive and foolish to me, rather than having ill-intent behind it although I understand the upset she caused. She cites what Tomiwa Owolade says about the UK, but then she makes points about the US & South Africa and racism. As Owolade's book title says 'this is not America'.

And maybe there were no white people chained to the trans Atlantic slave ships, but it's estimated that one million white Europeans were taken in slavery, by Arabs in the main.

What are "tories"?

Lol. So many want to forget, it aint fashionable anti-racism.

On the 8am news bulletin it was said Labour's National Executive(?) are still to make a decision but DA's understanding is that she will be barred from standing.

So still not a definitive official announcement.

She's an anti-semite and needs to be got rid.

From 7.30am onwards:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-69071603

BBC Today programme just announced that "someone" at the BBC has spoken to DA and she apparently said the whip has been restored but she has been barred from standing for Labour at the election.

okay, so you don’t vote Labour because they’re insufficiently ideologically pure for you.

What’s the alternative that can actually form government?

I have the feeling that Abbott was writing about Britain only, making a comparison between communities in this country alone. Otherwise her letter makes no sense. I think she is still wrong - jokes about Jews and gas chambers and Hitler not finishing the job were common when I was at school in the 70s-80s. The Sex Pistols released a single with Ronnie Biggs entitled "Belsen Was A Gas".

Furthermore, her own close colleague, Jeremy Corbyn, campaigned against the National Front attacks on synagogues in the 1970s. She cannot be unaware of this.

Still, I believe that calling her an anti-Semite is hyperbole because making a stupid comparison is not necessarily evidence of hostility. Given her positive relations with her Jewish constituents I'd say the hostile intent is lacking.

A local rabbi who knows her well:

The letter came as a particular shock, Gluck continued, because of Abbott’s previous commitment to her heavily Charedi constituency.
“Diane has worked passionately for the community,” he said.
“She has helped us with shechita, with immigration issues, with the Shomrim.

https://www.thejc.com/news/politics/diane-abbott-to-meet-leading-hackney-rabbi-to-heal-rifts-after-observer-letter-h5v9wfde

Abbott has a blind spot that has resulted in some bone-headed statements down the years. She's academically bright but that doesn't guarantee good sense in all respects.

Her ‘defence’ was the letter was a draft or ‘oops I didn’t mean to say that out loud’.
There are very strong rumours that Diane is unwell, if that’s the case the LP should at least demonstrate some duty of care to her, but I don’t think she’s been treated particularly well. Or at best the LP have allowed the opportunity for people to say she hasn’t been treated well. IMO they should have either restored the whip or kicked her out. (Usually caveats that we don’t know what’s gone on behind the scenes)

The desperation of the tories on this thread is highly amusing.

Trump school of politics.

‘That worked spectacularly badly when Dear Leader and his former girlfriend were in charge in 2019.’

They are gone but funny that integrity only works when judging Tories, Labour gets a free pass usually. Vote for double standards then.

Oh! You are one of those principled Labour ideological purists who likes to make chippy remarks from the sidelines.

That worked spectacularly badly when Dear Leader and his former girlfriend were in charge in 2019.

You can’t run a country from opposition. Labour are styling the party to win an election.

We have precious few choices of who can form Government. The current lot are awful. Who do you suggest if not Labour?

Keir Starmer is a wolf in sheep clothes. You do not do not expect that from a man with integrity. She was a liability but they need to be professional and honest.

Having searched for her initial letter to the Observer, I do wonder if her letter was edited? What was published seems really short and truncated, without a beginning or an end. I haven't followed this story closely but I'd be interested to know if this question has been addressed ... as someone who used to live in Abbott's constituency, she's not usually the most succinct of speakers/ writers, and this is very short ...

Link to the original letter is here (second down).

My gut feeling is this is a very edited letter which was published (I'm happy to be proved wrong about this) mainly because it doesn't address the points in the article she cites as the cause for writing the letter in the first place. And also the jump from a general point about various minorities to pre-civil rights USA seems odd as a reader, especially given her knowledge of how heavily the Labour party was clamping down on anti-semitism (see the fate of her good friend Corbyn). Feels like there is a big chunk of the letter missing?

It just seems a spectacular misjudgment from a career politician if this is the full text? She's also Labour to the bone, so could see her not coming out and stating if the letter had been abridged until the disciplinary process had been concluded.

Of course, equally, this could also be evidence of her diminishing ability to formulate a point and recognise her own prejudice. But has her original email to the Observer ever been published?

Really not bothered what you think, I’ve read what she said, she’s an anti semite, rascism isn’t a heirarchy as she seems to believe. She can go Rot as far as I’m concerned, due process be damned. Furthermore just be make it very clear I don’t vote labour- before or after she had the whip removed- I’m not in any labour faction