A trailblazing hero to many, Diane Abbott is also an insurmountable problem for Labour

Angela Rayner and Ed Balls have sided with Corbynite footsoldiers demanding the longtime Hackney MP have the party whip restored. But, says John Rentoul, she remains a vivid reminder of what Keir Starmer is keen to persuade voters that Labour is not any more

Diane Abbott at a 2019 rally with Labour’s then shadow Brexit secretary Keir Starmer (PA)

Diane Abbott is a trailblazer. She is a hero of the anti-racist struggle. So said Apsana Begum, the Labour MP, on Newsnight, and she is not wrong. Abbott stood for something and fought for it, and it is partly because of her that the British parliament is more diverse than it has ever been.

But that does not mean that Labour’s disciplinary procedures should be overridden.

That she has been the victim of Tory donor Frank Hester’s alleged racism should have no bearing on how Labour deals with her own failings. Indeed, she has been the victim of racism and sexism all her life, which she has borne with dignity and courage, but that is no mitigation for the extraordinary letter she wrote to The Observerlast year, for which she was suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party. That was the letter in which she said that Jews experienced “prejudice”, but not “racism”. She “withdrew” it, “disassociated” herself from it and apologised.

This last point impressed Ed Balls, who, in 2010, was one of Abbott’s rivals for the Labour leadership. He said on his podcast yesterday: “She’s not Jeremy Corbyn, who showed no contrition at all for what he said about antisemitism. She apologised immediately.”

But it is not an argument that is universally shared in the Labour Party. Hester has apologised for allegedly saying that seeing Abbott on TV made him “want to hate all Black women”, but Labour is still calling on the Conservative Party to give up the millions he has donated.

And while it is undeniable that Abbott is “not Jeremy Corbyn”, she is a member of what was once called the Core Group of the former leader’s supporters. She is a vivid reminder of the party that Keir Starmer is keen to persuade voters that Labour is not any more. He said in the Commons this week, when Rishi Sunak accused him of having chosen to serve a leader who “let antisemitism run rife” in his party: “The prime minister is describing a Labour Party that no longer exists.”

If Starmer were to let Abbott back in, it would remind voters that that party does still exist, even if it is reduced to a powerless minority. So although it was a courteous gesture for Starmer to approach Abbott publicly after Prime Minister’s Questions and to ask if there was any way he could help, he is unlikely to act on her suggestion: “You could restore the whip.”

Nor is Starmer likely to be impressed by Angela Rayner, his deputy, telling the parliamentary press gallery lunch yesterday: “Personally, I would like to see Diane back.” At one level, this too was a mere politeness, as Rayner made clear by following it with a “but”: “But the Labour Party has to follow its procedures,” she said. “So it does not matter what I think.”

At another level, though, it was significant that the deputy leader, elected by Labour members, presented herself as building a bridge to the Corbynite party “that no longer exists”. Rayner added to the pressure on Starmer to do something about the apparent unfairness of a disciplinary case that has dragged on for nearly a year, while aligning herself with the tsunami of sympathy for Abbott from across the party triggered by the reporting of Hester’s comments.

On the face of it, it seems absurd that it should take a year to decide whether or not Abbott is a suitable person to be a Labour MP. Everyone knows that this is essentially a political decision, and that Starmer would like to delay it for long enough to prevent Abbott standing as the official Labour candidate for Hackney North and Stoke Newington at the general election. (She is still a member of the Labour Party, though, as is Corbyn, because decisions about party membership are in the hands of an independent disciplinary mechanism.)

I suspect that Starmer will ride out the storm of sympathy for Abbott. For all his solicitude towards her in the chamber on Wednesday, he has shown how ruthless he is in pursuit of “a changed Labour Party”.

It is not as if her letter to The Observer was an isolated incident. It is part of a long history of embarrassments, from objecting to the employment of Finnish nurses, “who may never have met a Black person before”, in Hackney, to accusing a Black journalist of “playing into” the “divide and rule” agenda of white people.

Only last week, she retweeted – and then deleted – a tweet that suggested allegations of Labour antisemitism were a “scam”.

Diane Abbott is a trailblazer and a hero of some parts of the struggle against racism. But she is also a torchbearer for a Corbynite politics that Starmer repudiates. He cannot afford to show any weakness this close to the election.