Diane Abbott is no fool – but she keeps blundering into every trap set by the Tories, and she’s become a liability

Terrorism, of course, is a difficult issue for the far left. But were I the Lynton Crosby of Labour’s campaign, I’d order Abbott and everyone else to memorise this mantra: ‘It is disgraceful that Theresa May, Michael Fallon and others are seeking to manipulate the tragedy in Manchester for advantage by making tawdry party political points. We will not join them in the gutter’

If Labour is to sustain its gloriously unexpected recovery in the polls, it cannot afford more of the shadow Home Secretary’s pile-ups (Reuters)

Many regard Diane Abbott as a one-woman electoral wrecking ball, but I couldn’t disagree more. If it were up to me, she’d be a dead cert for the Spectator award for Campaigner of the Year. The fact that she would win for her work on behalf of the Conservatives is just the sort of tedious pedantry up with which we will not put.

While almost every Abbott appearance guarantees some vehicular mayhem, the magnitude varies from interview to interview. Compared with that chat about funding extra police with LBC’s Nick Ferrari – a 7,497 car pile-up, stretching all the way along the M4 from the Heathrow turn-off to the Severn Bridge – today’s debate about terrorism with Andrew Marr was a relatively minor accident.

While the shadow Home Secretary’s explanation of her shifting take on the IRA would certainly have one motorway lane, it would cause traffic to tail back no more than a couple of junctions.

The saddest thing about her defence of that 1984 remark that “every defeat for the British state” at IRA hands is “a victory for us all” was that it was blatantly pre-prepared. Having anticipated the question, she had actively decided that a comparison between ditching that view and ditching her “splendid afro” of that time was a brilliant response.

The second saddest was that it gave the next occupant of the sofa, the Home Secretary Amber Rudd, an even more open goal than the one headed in yesterday by Aaron Ramsey to win the FA Cup for Jeremy Corbyn’s Arsenal. While few sentient life forms could have missed, the impressive Rudd slotted it home with laconic elegance. I’ve changed my hairstyle a few times in the last 34 years, she pointed out, but not my views on how to keep Britain safe. Ouch.

Whether whoever coordinates Labour’s media appearances is a sleeper embedded by Tory high command, or genuinely thinks of Abbott as an asset, is as mysterious as why she has become such a liability. She may carry a cargo hold-full of troublesome baggage, but so do Corbyn and John McDonnell. Decades on the hard left, championing causes regarded as traitorous by the hard right, make that inevitable. Yet where Labour’s leader and shadow Chancellor have become fairly adept at dealing with questions about past affiliations, Abbott blunders into every trap, however clearly telegraphed, with puppyish zeal.

The special irritation here is that Abbott is very clever. No Paddington-reared child of Jamaican immigrants gets to study law at Cambridge by being a dummy. Then again, the post-war history of British politics, from Enoch Powell to Boris Johnson, is laden with clever fools whose capacity for common sense is in direct inverse proportion to the size of their intellects.

Whether evidence of raw courage or crazed arrogance, her eagerness to return to the airwaves is almost endearing. We all love a trier, and few are more trying than Diane Abbott.

Terrorism, of course, is a difficult issue for the far left. But were I the Lynton Crosby of Labour’s campaign, I’d order Abbott and everyone else to memorise this mantra: “It is disgraceful that Theresa May, Michael Fallon and others are seeking to manipulate the tragedy in Manchester for advantage by making tawdry party political points. While a Labour government would be ferocious in combating terrorism, we will not join them in the gutter.”

That would avoid the temptation to reflect on how changing tonsorial tastes equate to changing views on IRA bombs. It would also be the truth. The Tories are repugnantly cynical in trying to profit from an atrocity that occurred, however personally blameless they might be, on their watch. Labour spokespeople have every right to refuse to be dragged down to such a scummy level.

They also have a perfect right to argue that ferociously combating terrorism is not the same as increasing the already fearsome powers of the state. Even if it were possible to bully tech companies into compliance – and good luck with that when you can’t even make them pay their taxes – stopping end-to-end message encryption would have no impact beyond undermining internet security for the law-abiding. Sacrificing liberties for no other reason than to look strong is an ultimate sign of weakness.

Ironically, Diane Abbott is the ideal person to make this case. Or at least she was. In 2008, she did win a Spectator prize, for Parliamentary Speech of the Year, with an address arguing against her own government’s counter-terrorism bill, and specifically the proposal to increase detention without charge to a maximum of 42 days. It was every inch as splendid as her afro. “I do not believe… that there is some trade-off between our liberties and the safety of the realm,” she told the House. “What makes us free is what makes us safe, and what makes us safe is what will make us free.”

That was right then, and it remains so now. With a former Met assistant commissioner proposing the internment of Muslim suspects, it is worth stating that while the methodology of terrorism has altered, the sovereign principles that govern justice and democracy have not. There, to borrow from Theresa May, nothing has changed.

Judging that speech against her recent work, Diane Abbott has changed. If Labour is to sustain this gloriously unexpected recovery in the polls, it cannot afford more of her pile-ups. A strong and stable leader would overcome the personal embarrassment, and advise his old friend/ love interest/ compadre that a 10-day period of silence from her would be most welcome.