Diane Abbott has been suspended by the Labour Party after doubling down on comments she made about the kinds of racism people face in the UK.
The Hackney North MP wrote in a letter to the Observer back in April 2023, that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people ‘undoubtedly experience prejudice’ that is ‘similar to racism’.
She added: ‘It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism.’
She quickly withdrew the comments but was suspended by Labour anyway.
The MP, who was just readmitted to the party before the elections, wasasked again in an interview with the BBC whether she regretted the comments. But she replied: ‘No, not at all.
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‘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. They are different types of racism.’
Labour said it would not be commenting ‘while this investigation is ongoing’.
Deputy leader Angela Rayner had said she was disappointed that Diane Abbott defended the comments that led to her year-long suspension.
‘There’s no place for antisemitism in the Labour party, and obviously the Labour party has processes for that,” she told The Guardian.
‘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 is the longest-serving female MP in the Commons, having entered Parliament in 1987.
She said she was ‘grateful’ to be a Labour MP in the BBC interview, but that she was sure the party leadership had been ‘trying to get me out’.