Labour chiefs are not seeking to force Diane Abbott out of the party, says a minister after she was suspended for doubling down on comments made two years ago on racism.
Treasury minister James Murray stressed that there was a “process” to be followed by the party after the veteran MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington had the whip removed for her latest comments.
Comment: What, exactly, has Diane Abbott said that’s so wrong?
Ms Abbott has accused the party leadership of seeking to force her out, and it did attempt to stop her standing for Labour at the General Election last year.
But Mr Murray told BBC Breakfast: “It’s not true that the Labour leadership wants her out.
“What has happened is she has made these comments and she has been adminstratively suspended because that is the process that the Labour Party has.
“For all MPs when they are suspended the option of coming back is always there depending on how the process plays out.”
She later apologised for the remarks and was readmitted just in time to stand as the Labour candidate in her London seat at the General Election last year.
But in an interview broadcast this week, Ms Abbott, the Mother of the House who has represented her constituency since 1987, said she did not regret the incident, which led to a second suspension.
Following her suspension, Ms Abbott told BBC Newsnight: “It is obvious this Labour leadership wants me out.”
The row comes after Sir Keir Starmer stripped the whip from four other Labour MPs for “persistent breaches of discipline” as the Prime Minister seeks to reassert his grip on his back benches following a rebellion over welfare reform.
“Diane Abbott has been administratively suspended from the Labour Party, pending an investigation. We cannot comment further while this investigation is ongoing,” a Labour spokesperson said on Thursday.
Ms Abbott later said: “It is obvious this Labour leadership wants me out.
“My comments in the interview... were factually correct, as any fair-minded person would accept.”
The original comments in 2023 were in a letter to The Observer newspaper, and she withdrew the remarks the same day and apologised “for any anguish caused”.
In the interview with BBC Radio 4’s Reflections programme, she was asked whether she looked back on the incident with regret.
“No, not at all,” she said.
“Clearly, there must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism, because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don’t know.
“You don’t know unless you stop to speak to them or you’re in a meeting with them.
“But if you see a black person walking down the street, you see straight away that they’re black. There are different types of racism.”
She added: “I just think that it’s silly to try and claim that racism which is about skin colour is the same as other types of racism.”
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner was asked if she was disappointed by the comments.
“I was. There’s no place for antisemitism in the Labour Party, and obviously the Labour Party has processes for that,” she told The Guardian newspaper.
“Diane had reflected on how she’d put that article together, and said that ‘was not supposed to be the version’, and now to double down and say ‘Well, actually I didn’t mean that. I actually meant what I originally said’, I think is a real challenge.”
Ms Abbott entered Parliament in 1987 and holds the title of Mother of the House.
Her suspension comes in the same week that Sir Keir carried out a purge of troublesome backbenchers following a revolt over planned welfare reforms which saw the Government offer major concessions to rebels.
Rachael Maskell, who spearheaded plans to halt the Government’s Bill, had the whip suspended alongside Neil Duncan-Jordan, Brian Leishman and Chris Hinchliff.
Party sources said the decision to suspend the whip after the welfare revolt was taken as a result of persistent breaches of discipline rather than a single rebellion.
