MORE than 35,000 people have signed a petition calling on Prime Minister Andy Burnham to reinstate Diane Abbott in the Labour Party.
Abbott, the longest-serving female MP in the Commons, was suspended from the Labour Party for a second time last year after repeating comments about racism for which she had previously apologised.
Now more than 35,000 have called on Burnham and chief whip Anneliese Midgely to bring her back into the party, with some Labour MPs also backing the call.
Scottish Labour MP Brian Leishman said: “Diane is a trailblazer who has inspired people to get involved in politics and has committed her life to the labour movement. We are all stronger with Diane being in the Labour Party.”
Bell Ribeiro-Addy added: “If Labour truly wants to be a broad church again, restoring the whip to Diane is the first and easiest step.”
Abbott lost the whip and had a lengthy stint sitting as an independent after she suggested in 2023 that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people experience prejudice, but not racism.
She apologised for those remarks at the time and was eventually readmitted to the party just in time to stand as a Labour candidate in the 2024 General Election.
But in a BBC interview released in July last year, she said she did not regret the incident.
Abbott entered Parliament in 1987 and holds the honorary title of Mother of the House.
Her suspension comes in the same week that Starmer carried out a purge of troublesome backbenchers in a bid to assert authority over the party.
National executive member Yasmin Dar said: “Diane is a lifelong champion of peace and justice and a formidable campaigner in the interests of ordinary people. We need her back where she belongs.”
Burnham has pledged to leave the factionalism of the Starmer years behind and would seek to make appointments from the party’s left and centrist wings.
He appointed three new ministerial aides from Labour’s most leftwing faction, the Socialist Campaign Group.
