Diane Abbott to be banned from standing for Labour

[IwantToRetire]

... Diane Abbott will not be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate in the forthcoming general election, in a move that is likely to end her 37-year career in parliament.

The MP for Hackney North & Stoke Newington — the first black woman elected to parliament — has been suspended from the party since April last year and the Labour leadership has concluded that there are no circumstances in which she will stand under its banner on July 4.

An announcement of the party’s position could come as early as today. There are discussions among senior aides to Sir Keir Starmer about restoring her to the Labour whip before the election to allow her to leave politics “with dignity”.

Last week the Labour leader promised a resolution to the case before June 4, his party’s deadline for candidate selection, which falls three days before the legal close of nominations.

On Tuesday morning the BBC reported that the party’s internal investigation into a letter by Abbott to The Observer, in which she likened the discrimination suffered by Jewish people, the Irish and Travellers to the bullying of redheads, had concluded six months ago, without any update on her status as an election candidate.
Abbott, 70, is said to have been issued with a formal warning by the party and was told to complete an “antisemitism awareness course”. She did so in February, having apologised publicly and withdrawn her remarks.

Sources close to the left-wing MP told the BBC that Labour leadership was deliberately “dragging out the process in order to block her from being a candidate at the election”. It is understood that the decision to exclude her is final and will not change even in the event she issues a further apology. ...

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/diane-abbott-mp-labour-general-election-2024-fvgnbprdm

(If this is true, irrespective of the rights and wrongs, that Labour should use such underhand tactics is just disgusting. In other words they could have told her this in February. Can only imagine how they will behave once in Government.)

Can also be read at https://archive.ph/orgiJ

I know there have been other threads but MNHQ search is useless and even searching by google didn't bring them up, except this one which I seem to have started. https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5029371-rally-of-support-for-diane-abbot-in-hackney-called-by-hackney-black-women

@soundsys we won't know who any of the Labour candidates are until next week - I think on 4th.

@BIWI ah right, thank you! That makes sense - I think that's the bit of the puzzle I was missing!

Some candidates have already been selected & named

https://vote.labour.org.uk/results

"Seriously, do her misjudged words really make her an anti-Semite?"

I'm not sure you've read my post fully.

I agree that it is quite serious. I know that this is not what the thread is about but I would be grateful to know from anyone anywhere if the charges of racism against her by her own colleagues have ever been investigated?
Or have these simply been brushed aside in the same way that she was ignored multiple times in the HoC when she tried to address the Frank Hester racist remarks about her?

Exactly - everyone is going on about how corrupt and useless the Tories are but aren't holding Labour to the same standards.

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

Its astonishing how many people are just dumbing this down to the 2 party system.

I wasn't sure when I posted late last night that some of the "cookie crumbles" weren't those based in the US.

But it seems that in the usual yo yo politics of the UK, the media groomed voters just go lets give the other lot a go.

And have no interest what so ever in actually understanding that the UK is in a downward spiral.

As to the absurd idea that I would vote on ideological purity is just plain stupid. Where have I said that.

This is about people being trustworthy.

Or are we to assume that all politics is corrupt, they all lie, they dont follow the rules but expect us to.

Seriously? No-one is demanding Labour avoid any impression of racism to the same extent of as the Tories? Are you on drugs?

Thanks for your post.

Not only do I agree with your analysis, but it is a relief not to have which a number of posters think they can do, is make personal remarks about her based on nothing but what the media has fed them.

Or derail the thread, by going on about the letter, when there is an existing thread about this.

Funny that if we heard a GC woman MP was being treated like DA has been by the Labour Party there would be lots of sympathy and out rage.

But apparently not a Black women who had been shoddily treated by the Party she has been a member of for years.

All she deserve apparently is gross speculation about her private life and health.

Seriously? No-one is demanding Labour avoid any impression of racism to the same extent of as the Tories? Are you on drugs?

Oh dear, another misdirecting of the point of the thread.

This is about how the Labour party is manipulating its own, ie they wrote the guidelines, to get rid of an MP who the current in group, ie the Starmerites, think is too much of a reminder of Labour pre Corbyn.

To repeat yet again

Diane wrote a letter to a newspaper that was published and roundly denounced for being anti semitic

She apologised and was suspended whilst there was an investigation.

This investigation was completed by the end of 2023 and the Labour Party said she should take a course about anti semitism, which she did by February 2024.

The Labour Party did not announce that the investigation was complete and that as DA had done the training should have been re-instated as a Labour MP.

It was only because someone leaked this info to the BBC that anyone knew.

After a bit of non statement statements Labour eventually said she was now reinstated as a Labour MP.

ie they kept her, and lets not forget she did not at any time since February make public that she had done as requested, but not been re-instated.

Its irrelevant whether you or I or anyone else thinks she is this that or the other. The is about how Labour says it works and manages itself. ie rules are bent to suit the Starmerites.

I suspect that at the last moment Labour will say she cant be the candidate for her constituency, not just to get rid of her, but to make sure she doesn't have time to then complete the process to stand as an independent.

It has already been mentioned who Labour wants to stand in that seat, one of whom is a current Hackney Labour councillor and many were suprised she didn't stand to be Mayor of Hackney after the last (sleazy child porn cover up for male Labour councillor) mayor had to stand down. Clearly Labour wanted her to be available to take over DA's seat. She is a very nice woman, and genuinely wants to be helpful but is about as independent in her thinking as any other clone.

Yes.
Some forms of racism are less acceptable to society than others.
Anti-semitism is perhaps the most condemned, as a black woman, Abbott faces far more acceptable racism. It should not be like that but it is and Abbott should have been more aware of that when she wrote.
If someone were to write "Jews and travellers are alike" we would see it as anti-semitic rather than anti-traveller.

Well, in the case of the Irish famine the tories were the good guys, they sent relief to Ireland. The Whigs (permutated now into LibDems through various incarnations) stopped it. Depends who you think is a tory (they were Jacobites, so I dislike them for that - but current lot are not Pitt's lot or Bonnie Prince Charlie's).

Free market idealism.
Still, perhaps a little off topic?

Oh she's just been speaking in Hackney to say she's standing one way or another!

Hackney will be interesting if she stands as an indie. The left-leaning vote split. Labour could lose it.

I think if she'll take it if she stands as a independent and it will be a total clusterfuck for Labour

I mean, she’s right.

white people or white looking people do not experience systematic racism. Prejudice? Absolutely.

She hasn't been banned though www.threads.net/@skynews/post/C7hf374tVf9/

Was she a bit shaky when she was speaking in Hackney this evening? It looked like the mic she was holding was shaking l

If I'd been treated like Diane Abbott I'd be shaking with anger, so maybe she is too?

I’d call the Holocaust pretty systematic

She would win if she stood as an Independent.
Whatever your views on DA, she is popular among those in her constituency
and has done an excellent job

Quite.
Though I think the poster was speaking in the present day context within Britain. It is still a gross generalisation.

Ah bless. Doesn't know what Tories are and can't use Google. Awww.

She's not. The treatment of Roma is persistently racist, for example. And she referenced the Jews as not being subject to systematic racism and she was as wrong as anyone could be. White people do experience systematic racism. Racism is about othering, not colour, and some of the most racist people I have met have not been white.