Veteran MP Diane Abbott was this morning stripped of the Labour whip amid a backlash at her disgraceful suggestion that Jewish people don’t suffer racism.
The former shadow home secretary has been suspended as a Labour MP by the party’s chief whip Alan Campbell while an investigation is carried out.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has faced calls to take action against Ms Abbott following her comments in a Sunday newspaper.
The 69-year-old, who has been an MP for more than 35 years, suggested that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people encountered prejudice but were not all their lives subject to racism.
Amid the outrage at her comments, Cabinet minister Grant Shapps accused Ms Abbott, a close supporter of ex-Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, of ‘spouting hateful anti-Semitism.
She later gave a statement to wholly and unreservedly withdraw remarks and disassociated herself from them as she blamed drafting errors, but Labour pushed ahead with action against the ex-shadow minister.
A spokesperson said that the Labour Party completely condemns the comments which were deeply offensive and wrong and that the chief whip has suspended the Labour whip from Diane Abbott pending investigation.
The row was sparked by Ms Abbott’s letter to the Observer newspaper, in which she responded to a recent comment article that said Irish, Jewish and Traveller people all suffer from racism.
Ms Abbott wrote that they undoubtedly experience prejudice and that this was similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they’re interchangeable.
She said that it was true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice but that they were not all their lives subject to racism, and that in pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus.
She said apartheid South Africa, these groups were allowed to vote and that at the height of slavery, there were no white-seeming people manacled on the slave ships.
In response to Ms Abbott’s comments, Energy Secretary Grant Shapps posted on Twitter that once again, Jewish people have to wake up and see a Labour MP casually spouting hateful anti-Semitism.
Immigration minister Robert Jenrick tweeted that minimising anti-Jewish racism as mere prejudice was ignorant, offensive and shameful.
Oliver Cooper, the chair of Watford Conservative Association, called for Sir Keir Starmer to strip Ms Abbott of the Labour whip.
The biggest question of our time – who keeps voting this fool in? Clearly, people who agree with her views, but also have a right to their views.
Sir Keir Starmer reacted decisively and removed the whip from her, and hopefully, she won’t represent Labour at the next General Election and rightly so – hopefully her constituents will do the right thing and vote her out, and you have to give Sir Keir Starmer his due – he doesn’t dither or delay like Boris Johnson or Rishi Sunak, he took the whip from her immediately, and I imagine she’ll be out the door very soon.
It’s taken far too long for this thoroughly unpleasant woman to be called to account, and over the years she’s made numerous absurd comments, and this would have made numerous people extremely angry.
Whatever university Ms Abbott went to, she must have got a degree in idiocy with honours, and I can’t believe she’s survived for so long.
What’s even more alarming is that she obviously believes it, but then backtracked on herself. She should own her opinion, even if it was misguided because she looked more stupid backtracking.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 