Diane Abbott claims Keir Starmer ‘treated her as a non-person’
MP Diane Abbott has claimed Sir Keir Starmer treated her as a ‘non-person’ after a Tory donor made racist comments about her.
The MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington claimed she was treated badly during the fall out after Tory donor Frank Hester made racist comments about her last year.
In an interview with BBC Newsnight, Abbott said Starmer ‘never reached out to her personally and did treat me as a non-person’.
She added: ‘If somebody was threatening to have you shot, you would have felt your party would have offered you more support, giving you advice on safety and security, even kind of commiserated with you. And none of that happened.’
Hester made remarks, including that Ms Abbott ‘should be shot’, during at a meeting in 2019, according to a Guardian report.
The newspaper said Hester told his colleagues he did not hate all black women before making his remarks about the politician.
A Labour spokesperson told Metro: ‘Keir Starmer has great respect for Diane Abbott and she continues to be an inspiration to many. There is no doubt that she has received the most abuse of any MP just because of her gender and the colour of her skin, and that is completely reprehensible and wrong.
‘The party, including Keir Starmer, vocally condemned Frank Hester’s vile comments and reached out to Diane at the time to offer support. It’s simply wrong to say that there was any plan being pushed by the leadership to force her out. We continue to value Diane’s significant contribution to public life.’
During the inquiry into Abbott’s ‘anti-semitic’ comments, in which she suggested Jewish, Irish and Traveller people were not subject to racism ‘all their lives’, Abbott said she felt ‘low and depressed’.
‘I think that Keir Starmer wanted to finish his clear-out of the left in the parliamentary Labour Party and by writing a very ill-advised letter, I gave him the opportunity to move against me,’ she told BBC.
‘And I think what they were trying to do was to string out and string out the investigation.
‘So when a general election is around the corner, they could just move me out of the way as a Labour candidate because I wouldn’t be in the parliamentary Labour Party, and they would parachute in somewhere else.’
Starmer ultimately allowed Abbott to stand for the Labour party, after large crowds gathered to protest against the racism and hatred against Abbott.
Banners declaring: ‘Racism is extremism’; ‘freedom is a constant struggle’; ‘refugees welcome’; ‘say no to Islamophobia’; and ‘stamp out antisemitism, yes to diversity’ were held by the demonstrators in March.
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