Abbott: They were determined to get rid of me the way they got rid of Corbyn

Like her or not, no one can deny Diane Abbott is a trailblazer.

She has scored several major accomplishments: the first black girl at her local grammar school, the first black woman at Newnham College, Cambridge, (there was one mixed race and another Asian woman), the only black graduate trainee in her intake at the Home Office, the first black person to be employed by the National Council for Civil Liberties, becoming the country’s first black woman MP – and now, the longest serving female member of the House of Commons.

All of these achievements are in her memoir. Also dissected in detail are the many high-profile rows and media storms she has been involved in.

The last, and some would say the most controversial, didn’t make it into the book, but Diane Abbott is happy to set the record straight.

In one of the biggest dramas leading up to the recent election, Abbott said she was being barred from standing as a Labour Party candidate unless she agreed to retire.

She was suspended from the party over comments she made about Jewish and Traveller people not suffering racism, but instead prejudice, like people with red hair.

She apologised straight away and completed a course, but was still sitting as an independent MP a year later.

She believes it was part of a cunning plan to push her out of the party she had dedicated her life to.

“Well, the thing to remember was I had been unanimously reselected from my local party, but the National Party, the people around Keir Starmer, were determined to get rid of me in the same way they got rid of my colleague Jeremy Corbyn,” she told ITV News.

“The investigation went on for nearly a year, and in the end, I surmised that what they were trying to do is prolong the investigation until the election was called and then parachuting a new candidate.

“So, in the run up to that, though, they tried to do a deal. Their deal was that they would restore the whip.

“But then that day, that afternoon, I would stand down and it wouldn’t be next week or the week after, it’d be that day. Well, I just thought that was humiliating and I said no.

“And then it was a case of who blinked first, and they blinked first.”

‘The people around Keir Starmer were determined to get rid of me,’ Diane Abbott tells ITV News

Asked if she thinks Sir Keir Starmer should have brought it all to an end much sooner, she said: “People, not necessarily left-wing people, but MPs who’d known me a long time, went to him and said, you just need to wind this up. But he wouldn’t listen.

“My brother lives in rural Buckinghamshire surrounded by Tories, and even they came up to him and said: why are they treating your sister like this?”

Asked if she regretted writing the letter which led to her losing the Labour whip and not being able to represent the party in the House she said: “Well, I think people understood what I was saying and those that didn’t understand were people that didn’t want to, and certainly the party leadership used it as an excuse to get rid of me.”

And she defended herself over claims her comments were antisemitic.

“I’ve been the MP for Hackney for 37 years. It has one of the largest Jewish communities in the country. I think it’s number 7. And if I was an anti-Semite, my Jewish constituents would have worked that out by now,” she said.

On the night Labour won its historic landslide, Abbott triumphed in her Hackney North and Stoke Newington seat. It was her tenth election victory in a row.

At the opening of Parliament, Starmer talked flatteringly about her career and praised her as the new Mother of the House – a title given to the longest-serving woman in the Commons.

Asked what she thought about this, she said: “Well, it was interesting that he was so flattering when he and people around him had gone to such lengths to get rid of me. But you know, I allowed myself to be flattered.”

Asked if she likes her party leader, she said: “He’s the leader of the party, you can’t really take a view on them.”

She gives the same dispassionate answer when asked if she respects him.

‘You can’t really take a view on the leader of your party,’ says Abbott

Proud of her left-wing beliefs, Diane Abbott has been a fearless and vocal advocate for the disenfranchised, along with her neighbouring MP, Jeremy Corbyn. The pair had a brief relationship in the 1970s which, she says, was far from romantic.

“We were boyfriend and girlfriend momentarily. Jeremy is a great person, but his life is 99% politics, and I think I wasn’t prepared to be the 1%,” she said.

“I moved in with him for some time, but I started to whine and complain that we never went out anywhere. So, he thought about it. And then one day he said we’re going out.

“And I thought, wow, when I got dressed and we got in the car and he drove and I was like, oh, maybe we’re going to go to a nice wine bar.

“He took me to Highgate Cemetery and showed me the tomb of Karl Marx. That was absolutely the most romantic thing we ever did, so it can be no surprise to you that the relationship didn’t last.”

‘Jeremy’s life is 99% politics and I wasn’t prepared to be the 1%,’ says Abbott

Much later in life, Abbott dated Ghanaian architect David Ayensu-Thompson. When she got pregnant, he did eventually ask her to marry him, but she admits it wasn’t the most romantic proposal.

“Then I got pregnant, and it seemed to be going not so well, but I had a great friend called Ros Howells and she was the most insistent that we had to marry. And she met him on her own, and he came out of the room and proposed,” she said.

“Well, I had been prepared to have my son on my own, but I knew that Ross knew best. The relationship didn’t last but you have a wonderful son.”

Born in Paddington, Abbott was first elected to Parliament in 1987 and says she has been the focus of intense racist abuse ever since.

Back then it was in the form of letters sent into her constituency office, now it is mainly online.

According to an Amnesty International report she received almost half of all the abusive tweets sent to female MPs in the run up to the 2017 election.

More abusive tweets flooded in earlier this year with comments made by the Tory Party donor Frank Hester saying she made him “want to hate all black women” and she “should be shot”.

“It’s not that I’m not used to abuse because we get it online every day, but to have somebody, a public figure, say that publicly was very upsetting and made me feel as if I was under threat,” she said.

“Some of the references to me being shot made me think that I had a target on my back. Emotionally, it’s very difficult, but I’ve got good friends who’ve supported me over the years and always remind me, Diane, this is just politics.”

The media storm which she says upset her most was in the run-up to the 2017 election when she was Shadow Home Secretary.

In an interview for LBC, she made a complete muddle of how much Labour plans for extra police officers would cost. She describes the criticism which followed as a “pile on”.

“There’s been so many unfair attacks in the media, but this was one I remember that felt particularly unfair. I think one of the ones I found particularly difficult was being attacked for those numbers,” she said.

“People had known me for so long. People knew I wasn’t stupid. I mean, I spent ten years on a politics programme with Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo and yet given the slightest excuse, people piled in on me for being an idiot.”

She was also roundly criticised for sending her son to a private school, a decision she does not regret and is not prepared to apologise for.

She has now served 37 years as an MP and says she has more than enough stamina for the next five years.

“Of course I have the stamina,” she said.

“If I hadn’t had stamina, I would not have stood for parliament in the first place.”

Abbott said in her book that if she could live her life again, she wouldn’t change it.

“No, I’ve had problems, I’ve had attacks, I’ve had downs,” she said.

“I remember I’ve nearly resigned over some media sort of scandal. But I rang one of the men that got elected in 1987 with me, and he said Diane, you can’t step down. You’ve forgotten what it took for us to get here.”

A Labour spokesperson said: “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.”