Diane Abbott’s remarks show Labour still has a long way to go on antisemitism

Editorial: After all that Sir Keir Starmer has done to extirpate antisemitism in the Labour Party and win back the trust of the Jewish community, it is deeply dismaying to see Ms Abbott doing a very good job of reminding the world of one the party’s most shameful episodes

Labour has not yet repaired itself after the problems caused by Mr Corbyn and Ms Abbott during their period of ascendancy in the party (PA)

Just as the Conservative government struggles to extricate itself from the Dominic Raab bullying sandal, along comes Diane Abbott to land herself and her party in another ugly row about antisemitism.

Ms Abbott has made her fair share of gaffes over her political career, but it is astonishing that she chose gratuitously to write to the press to make her plain wrong and highly offensive remarks. Once again, she denied the racist nature of antisemitism and suggested that Jewish people had not experienced racism.

Ms Abbott argued with appalling callousness (and, frankly, ignorance) that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people had “undoubtedly experienced prejudice”, but added: “This is similar to racism and the two words are often used as if they are interchangeable.” She even drew a ludicrously ill-judged comparison of the lived and historical experiences of these groups with “white people with points of difference, such as redheads”. What was she thinking?