ONE of Keir Starmer's top aides has quit after leaked messages revealed he made sexually explicit comments about veteran MP Diane Abbott.
Starmer's director of strategy Paul Ovenden said he was leaving Downing Street over an “inappropriate” conversation he had with colleagues while working as a Labour press officer in 2017.
It comes following the sacking of Peter Mandelson as US ambassador after a cache of emails showed him supporting the convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein after he had pled guilty to sex offences.
Ovendon is close to chief of staff Morgan McSweeney and is one of a small group of Labour aides who were key to the "Starmer project" following the Jeremy Corbyn years.
Ovenden was Labour's deputy director of communications at the start of Starmer's leadership and later headed up the party's attack and rebuttal unit in opposition before becoming director of strategy.
The messages are understood to be part of a huge cache of internal messages and emails that were leaked in 2020 which showed senior officials in Labour’s headquarters were openly plotting against Corbyn.
Those leaked messages show Ovenden discussing sex acts involving Abbott with two female staff members.
Abbott was suspended by Labour earlier this year for a second time after she said on radio that she did not regret her past remarks on racism.
A No 10 spokesperson said: “These messages are appalling and unacceptable. As the first black woman to be elected to Parliament, Diane Abbott is a trailblazer who has faced horrendous abuse throughout her political career.
“These kinds of comments have no place in our politics.”
Speaking to Times Radio before Ovenden’s resignation was announced, Abbott said “it will be over” for Starmer if he wasn’t able to turn around the government’s fortunes by the local elections in May.
"I think if we do as badly as people say, well, it will be the case then that Starmer’s future as Labour leader and Labour prime minister will be over, really," she said.
She also suggested that Starmer needed to sack McSweeney.
“I think he probably does [need to be replaced]," she said.
"We’ve had a number of incidents. We had a reshuffle last week. And people believe that it’s McSweeney’s reshuffle. And one of the reasons people believe it is McSweeney put his wife in the whip’s office.
"So people felt this was a reshuffle that McSweeney had dictated. And that’s one of the things that has upset MPs.”
