Corbyn’s photo tribute to former lover Abbott

JEREMY Corbyn has paid tribute on Twitter to Diane Abbott, his ally and former lover. The Labour Party leader posted a series of pictures of their early years in politics.

He said: ‘Thirty years ago today Diane Abbott became an MP. As the first black woman MP she continues to inspire & represent the best of our Labour values.’

One picture – apparently taken inside the Commons chamber – showed Mr Corbyn looking at a young Miss Abbott, standing with former Tottenham MP Bernie Grant and former Labour minister Tony Banks.

Labour officials said the image dated from the late 1980s but it was not clear exactly when. Mr Corbyn posted underneath the picture: ‘Been sent some wonderful pictures today. Here’s Diane & I with Bernie Grant & Tony Banks, fierce anti-apartheid & social justice campaigners.’

Miss Abbott, 63, became the first black woman MP when she was elected to represent Hackney North and Stoke Newington in 1987.

After Mr Corbyn won the Labour leadership in 2015 it emerged the pair had been lovers in the late 1970s after the breakdown of his first marriage to Jane Chapman. The pair took a motorcycle holiday to communist East Germany.

Miss Abbott, who is Labour’s home affairs spokesman, had a difficult election campaign in which she endured a series of car crash interviews. In one she was unable to remember the cost of the party’s plan to recruit 10,000 police officers. She withdrew from the campaign on the eve of the election.

She told the Guardian she had stood down because of type 2 diabetes. ‘During the election campaign, everything went crazy – and the diabetes was out of control, the blood sugar was out of control,’ she said. Miss Abbott said she was badly out of sorts after conducting six or seven interviews in a row without eating enough food, adding: ‘It is a condition you can manage. I am doing that now.’

Miss Abbott, who was diagnosed with diabetes two years ago, last week claimed 75 per cent of the votes in her Hackney seat, winning by more than 35,000. She increased her majority by 11,000 – achieving what is believed to be the biggest ever margin of victory in her constituency.