Diane Abbott

1. Racism is just one form of prejudice
2. Racism isnt just black and white. The nazis were racist towards the jews, considering the jewish race to be subhuman and vermin.
3. I think what Abbot was trying to say is that there is some sort of hierachy of prejudice and that racism towards people of colour is the worst. I think this was pretty stupid of her and in the current climate bound to lead to her suspension.
 
Sexpom said:
Starmer is showing the general public he has what it takes to take action when MPs step out of line, he’s a very clever man. Would the Tories have suspended her? Probably not.
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coluka said:
Starmer acted quickly, proportionately and I am sure her days as a Labour MP will be numbered. It is time for her to take her medicine and call it a day. If she has any self respect she will slither back in the shadows and quietly disappear from political life before she causes any more pain.
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There's a lot of talk of Starmer acting quickly or doing the right thing but this raises questions.

Why is he taking so long to address the Forde Report that he commissioned, which found that there was a hierarchy of racism in Labour with anti black and Islamophobia being the worst?

Why is Angela Smith, who left Labour, joined the Independents then the Lib dems and described black and asian people as having a funny tinge, allowed back into the party, when what she did was against party rules?
 
Jedi boro said:
Here

www.liverpoolecho.co.uk

Birkenhead MP Frank Field: 'Why I nominated Jeremy Corbyn for Labour leader'

Birkenhead MP branded "moron" by ex Blair aide John McTernan
www.liverpoolecho.co.uk www.liverpoolecho.co.uk
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And it didn't take long for the abuse to begin did it:-

"Former PM Tony Blair has said that those whose heart tells them they should back left-winger Mr Corbyn should “get a transplant” while ex-Blair aide John McTernan has said that the 35 MPs who nominated him are “morons”.

Dismissing him before he'd even won the leadership contest, insulting the intelligence of a hell of a lot of Labour MPs and party members and signalling that they would be undermining him from the start.
 
I think there’s more going on with Diane Abbott tbh. The odd shoes, the bumbling interviews, boozing on a train (those are just examples that spring to mind) : it’s all a sign she’s not quite as she should be.
She shouldn’t be ridiculed that’s for sure
 
BlindBoyGrunt said:
There's a lot of talk of Starmer acting quickly or doing the right thing but this raises questions.

Why is he taking so long to address the Forde Report that he commissioned, which found that there was a hierarchy of racism in Labour with anti black and Islamophobia being the worst?

Why is Angela Smith, who left Labour, joined the Independents then the Lib dems and described black and asian people as having a funny tinge, allowed back into the party, when what she did was against party rules?
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I don’t know why the Forde report has not been properly addressed and your question is a fair one, how long is it now, 9 months ago?
As for Angela Smith, I agree it is not a good look her rejoining the party as a member, but i assume thats all it is right now isn’t it? I would hope there is no way back for her to stand for election given her horrid use of racist language. Is her status and rejoining against any of the laid down rules, it should be in my view but I don’t have them to hand to check.
 
BlindBoyGrunt said:
And it didn't take long for the abuse to begin did it:-

"Former PM Tony Blair has said that those whose heart tells them they should back left-winger Mr Corbyn should “get a transplant” while ex-Blair aide John McTernan has said that the 35 MPs who nominated him are “morons”.

Dismissing him before he'd even won the leadership contest, insulting the intelligence of a hell of a lot of Labour MPs and party members and signalling that they would be undermining him from the start.
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This is a problem when you choose a leader from too far from the centre of a party. As the right wing choices for the Tories (Braverman, Raab, etc.) demonstrate you are limited to ideologues and useful idiots.
 
TeaCider said:
It was a letter in response to something that wasn't said.

The article she was responding to had not claimed that people who are Jewish, Irish or Travellers experience the exact same form of racism as black people, or that they had it worse.
It just said that they experienced it.

In response, she took issue with the use of the word racism to describe it and tried to play top trumps with the experience of bigotry in modern Britain.
Quite what relevance she thought apartheid South Africa or Jim Crow America had on the matter eludes me.
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We literally were fighting a force in ww2 that saw Jewish people viewed as inferior and tried to remove them off the face of the earth . Hitler didn’t look up their religious history , he used their features to determine if they were Jewish . This suggests a genetic link to being jewish .

I’m sorry , but if Abbott and momentum agree with her, the tag of antisemite is apt for them .

Islam is technically a religion only too. Many of the left wouldn’t dispute its racism hating someone for being Muslim though
 
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coluka said:
I don’t know why the Forde report has not been properly addressed and your question is a fair one, how long is it now, 9 months ago?
As for Angela Smith, I agree it is not a good look her rejoining the party as a member, but i assume thats all it is right now isn’t it? I would hope there is no way back for her to stand for election given her horrid use of racist language. Is her status and rejoining against any of the laid down rules, it should be in my view but I don’t have them to hand to check.
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This is from the Labour Party rule book:-

4. Exclusions
A. A member of the Party who stands for election, subscribes to a nomination paper of or acts as the election agent to a person standing for election, in opposition to a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a Party member, subject to the provisions of Chapter 6.I.2 below of the disciplinary rules.

B. A member of the Party who joins and/ or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the Party, or supports any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate, or publicly declares their intent to stand against a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a Party member, subject to the provisions of Chapter 6.I.2 below of the disciplinary rules.

What statement is Starmer making when he allows people like this back into the party?
That her actions in representing other parties are forgivable because it was only Corbyn?
That the prejudice that she showed against black and Asian people is not as high up as anti-Semitism in our league table of prejudices so therefore overlookable?
 
Muttley said:
This is a problem when you choose a leader from too far from the centre of a party. As the right wing choices for the Tories (Braverman, Raab, etc.) demonstrate you are limited to ideologues and useful idiots.
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Maintaining the stream of insults in response to that particular post isn't the best look.
 
BlindBoyGrunt said:
This is from the Labour Party rule book:-

4. Exclusions
A. A member of the Party who stands for election, subscribes to a nomination paper of or acts as the election agent to a person standing for election, in opposition to a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a Party member, subject to the provisions of Chapter 6.I.2 below of the disciplinary rules.

B. A member of the Party who joins and/ or supports a political organisation other than an official Labour group or other unit of the Party, or supports any candidate who stands against an official Labour candidate, or publicly declares their intent to stand against a Labour candidate, shall automatically be ineligible to be or remain a Party member, subject to the provisions of Chapter 6.I.2 below of the disciplinary rules.

What statement is Starmer making when he allows people like this back into the party?
That her actions in representing other parties are forgivable because it was only Corbyn?
That the prejudice that she showed against black and Asian people is not as high up as anti-Semitism in our league table of prejudices so therefore overlookable?
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I do not disagree with your view on this issue, however, was she a member of the party at the time she represented another party or had she resigned that membership. If she did resign her membership straightaway, if so then i am not sure she is ineligible to rejoin if she has removed all ties with other groups. We have had in this century, people like Christian Wakeford and Quentin Davies leave the tories and cross the floor to Labour for example.

I appreciate Smiths situation is somewhat different and troubling but if she at the time of switching resigned membership or rejoining was not supporting another group or party, or indeed a member, then i am unclear what rule is breached to outright refuse. It has a bad smell about it, but perhaps the rules need tweaking to make it clear she and others like her can’t keep shifting their goalposts to suit themselves and consequences to her actions are applied. The wording of those rules can perhaps be interpreted differently. The 2 people i mentioned crossing the floor means that if they resign from other parties then at the time of joining they have a new clean slate i assume? If so i assume that is why Smith is free to rejoin. Her racist comments in the past though should prevent it imho, but it isn’t in any rule that she can’t is it, if not it should be.
 
viv_andersons_nana said:
Okay so she has - as I said, in a cack-handed way - given her opinion on a complex and serious issue. Is what she said offensive enough to be potentially kicked out of her party? I mean, just last week Labour MP Peter Kyle called Humza Yousaf “Muhammad” on live television and it barely registered. Shouldn’t he have to resign or at least face consequences as well?

To my mind the ease with which he says that name when discussing a brown person is a potential red flag, isn’t it? Especially when we live in an age of this Labour Party and the political news media being so committed to tackling racism and prejudice in ALL its forms. You’d think they’d be all over it, like they are Diane Abbott.

They have wanted Abbott out for years. Ever since I started following politics 20 years ago. She’s now made it incredibly easy for them to get rid of her. But I would say that if you’re going after her, you have to go after all of them.

Again, though, it’s just my opinion.
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I think there is something in what you say.
Others have pointed to Starmer’s inconsistency in dealing with other MPs in the party.

I think we have to accept there is bias in all of us and I’m sure he almost went ‘get in’ when he saw what DA had done.

Let’s face it, we are not going to get a party leader or PM who will get everything right ‘in our opinion’… we have to roll with the ups and downs.

DA’s comments, in my view were either ignorant or stupid. Had it not been ‘anti semitic’ there may have been a small chance of leniency.

It also helps Starmer stand apart from Sunak.
Sunak sends an endearing letter to Raaab following him being outed a bully.
Starmer acts swiftly with a racist MP
 
What I find interesting here is that when Gary Lineker made a nod towards the language of 1930s Germany, the right wing absolutely savaged him for it. For being extreme, offensive, sensationalist. People like Danny Finkelstein and publications like the Jewish Chronicle were absolutely horrified and baying for blood. This was at a time when we had a government adopting fascist policies and a Home Secretary literally invoking the rhetoric of the Nazi party. Remember that? Remember ‘Stop The Boats’?

The people baying for Abbott’s blood are the same people who said little or nothing about ACTUAL Nazi policies and rhetoric being adopted by the UK government.

Those people and publications are now freely referencing the things they said were out of bounds, freely calling to mind the Holocaust and Hitler’s Germany because Dianne Abbott has done nothing more than what David Baddiel did - celebrated, lauded author David Baddiel, who blacked up on national television - and said that Black people experience things like racism and prejudice differently to Jewish people.

Baddiel is given a documentary and platformed by ‘serious’ political programmes, Abbott is on the verge of being kicked out of her party. People like Finkelstein and the Spectator and the Jewish Chronicle - we know who they are, the flies around sh*t - are like a dog with two dicks with this.

Isn’t Abbott the most racially abused MP online? I’m sure there’s a study of that. Where was the support for the Black Labour MPs who spoke up and tried to make a case against the racism they’d experienced both in the Labour Party and in wider politics? What about the brown MPs, the Muslim MPs? Where is the anger and outrage about what those people experience?

Ask yourself, why is this, Abbott, being pushed in this way? If we dealt with every politician in the way she’s been dealt with there’d be barely anyone left. And I’m not saying her letter was clever, or wise, or that I agree with it - I’m saying that this is another case of one rule for one and one for another. And why is that? Who is pulling the strings here?

We are being played for mugs IMO.
 
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viv_andersons_nana said:
Ask yourself, why is this, Abbott, being pushed in this way? If we dealt with every politician in the way she’s been dealt with there’d be barely anyone left. And I’m not saying her letter was clever, or wise, or that I agree with it - I’m saying that this is another case of one rule for one and one for another. And why is that? Who is pulling the strings here?

We are being played for mugs IMO.
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I think you are rather over analysing the situation, over reacting and most importantly forgetting that politics is a dirty business.

Abbott has given those who would like her out or side-lined the perfect opportunity.
 
Muttley said:
I think you are rather over analysing the situation, over reacting and most importantly forgetting that politics is a dirty business.

Abbott has given those who would like her out or side-lined the perfect opportunity.
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I don't think he is over analysing or over reacting to the situation just giving a fair assessment.
 
Someone asked if the tories would have suspended someone so quick…

I’m sure they would have promoted them to some sort of race relations tzar roll first… they seem to like the poacher turned game keeper route and provide enough rope for the person to allow them selves to be hung out to dry…
 
The hierachy of racism was writ crystal clear by Martin Forde KC.

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Labour full-time staffers were continually openly abusive about Diane Abbott and were identified.
Starmer took no action. The same "Leader" has ignored other MP`s and Labour Members who have made Islamophobic, racist and anti-semitic remarks - because they support him and the "right" of the party. ​
 
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BoroMart said:
We all know these ‘new’ members are not nee members and because of their frequent arrival on the board and constant attacks of Labour they are in fact Tory activists, that now have such a weak stance it’s then that are playing the “Labour are as bad as the Tories”card, I mean 13 years and trying to blur reality down to that claim is pretty fecking
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With your constant attacks on the Tories you would presumably label yourself a “Labour Activist”?
 
viv_andersons_nana said:
Okay so she has - as I said, in a cack-handed way - given her opinion on a complex and serious issue.
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The Observer have basically asked for cack-handed hot takes barely longer than a tweet on a complex & serious issue, but I would've expected a veteran MP, even one with a particular interest on the topic, to not have taken the bait.
 
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