Abbott saga leaves Starmer with a significant dilemma
Political claims to the moral high ground are treacherous territory – one that can swiftly give way to an ethical quagmire. And so it has proved in the matter of the MP Diane Abbott, whose justified claim to have been subjected to racist remarks by Frank Hester, a prominent Conservative donor, have pivoted swiftly into a conundrum for
Sir Keir Starmer.
Few sensible folk across the party divide would disagree that Abbott was horribly derided in racial as well as political terms in Hester’s alleged comments in 2019, when he told a gathering that “you just want to hate all black women because she’s [Abbott] there” and that she “should be shot”.
So far, so difficult for the Government – in a week when, as the Labour leader tartly pointed out at Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, Rishi Sunak had assumed the “anti-extremism” mantle, only to discover that one of his main funders allegedly has unfortunate views about ethnic minorities – and reserves special ire for left-wing black women.
But Abbott is a turbulent priest for Starmer too, having had the whip withdrawn a year ago for comments that Jewish people’s experience of racism was not equivalent to those of black people. On this, she sits in an area of most difficulty for Starmer – the left wing of Labour denies that it is antisemitic but has a perpetually deaf ear to Jewish suffering.
This is not the position of the Starmer leadership, which fully acknowledges antisemitism as a fatal flaw in the Corbyn era. But it falls squarely into the awkward box of semantic issues. Starmer has also sought to neutralise a virulent divide about trans rights and their limits, by moving his own position from a sweeping designation of women as “adult females” (which hardly clarified the argument) to a recourse to “common sense”.
Seeing as these answers cannot please everyone, the aim of Starmer in an election year is to avoid matters outside the core arguments about the economy and public services overwhelming the contest. “Mainly, he doesn’t want to indulge culture wars but they keep breaking out nonetheless,” says an ally.
Abbott’s demand to Starmer when he approached her in the Commons, to “give me back the whip, then”, is double jeopardy for her old boss. Starmer’s non-committal reply, “I understand”, and mutterings about process, make it clear that he does not intend to wipe the slate clean on her renegade early comments.
So she found redheads, travellers and Jewish people to have experienced discrimination – but not in a way that she deemed comparable to the manifest and long-standing racism embodied in the slave trade. That last point is powerful, but it turns a blind eye to the depth of depravity that Jews endured in Holocaust and in many pogroms before and since.
Abbott’s remarks remain objectionable – but the incident and Commons encounter does raise the reasonable question of how long her suspension from Labour as a voting MP will last. The fact that Angela Rayner, Labour’s deputy leader, has spoken for the whip to be returned suggests that this will eventually happen. But neither can Starmer afford to leave the impression that a rude attack by a Conservative donor upends his campaign to show zero-tolerance on antisemitism.
That would undo much of Starmer’s determination to isolate the old left – and distract from intense Tory discomfort about the handling of the Hester comments and Sunak’s unfortunate refusal to return his large donation.
This tangle has ensnared both parties. What goes around has a habit of coming back around when politicians hurl hypocrisy charges. In this case, rather too fast and furiously for the Labour leader’s ability to handle it with ease. Now Starmer has to walk the line of due support for a maverick MP in the wilderness without backing down on the reasons for sending her there.
Due process is being cited as the holding pattern. But process in these matters is ultimately the instrument of what a party leader wants it to be. So the call on how to solve the Abbott dilemma is Starmer’s to make – and the timing and terms of that will be closely watched inside Labour and beyond.