Abbott sacked with a parting shot at Ed on immigration
LABOUR MP Diane Abbott savaged her party’s immigration policy yesterday just hours after being sacked from Ed Miliband’s frontbench team.
The Left-winger was fired as public health spokesman following a reshuffle meant to boost the number of women in Labour’s top team and reduce the influence of the Blairite centre-Right.
However, Miss Abbott said she warned Mr Miliband she would not remain quiet after her dismissal and would ‘enjoy being a free agent on the backbenches’.
She raised concerns over Labour’s acceptance of Government cuts, calling on the party to offer ‘a more far-reaching critique of austerity’.
Miss Abbott, who became Britain’s first black woman MP in 1987, also suggested that Mr Miliband should consider scrapping Britain’s Trident nuclear missiles and resist advisors who want him to adopt a tougher stance on immigration.
She singled out for criticism a campaign by the Home Office in which vans displaying billboards urging illegal immigrants go home or face arrest were driven around London during the summer.
Writing on the Guardian website, she said: ‘I have long despaired of the downward spiral of Labour’s rhetoric on i mmigration. For instance we should have come out against the “immigrants go home” van more quickly and more firmly.
‘Unfortunately the people around Miliband are terrified by the polling on immigration and have convinced him that we have to move Right.
‘My settled view is that there no votes for Labour in pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment.’
Miss Abbott, 60, has been a thorn in the side of a succession of Labour
‘I’ll live. These things happen’
leaders and regularly aired her views as a pundit on the BBC politics show This Week.
In 2010 she stood in the Labour Party leadership contest, coming last. Victor Ed Miliband gave her the public health job, but he is understood to be unhappy about her lack of loyalty, in particular over Syria when she threatened to resign if Labour backed military action.
Miss Abbott said Mr Miliband was ‘very nice’ as he asked her to leave the post. After he said he wanted her to go, she said: ’Miliband said a little anxiously “How do you feel?”. I said, “You must be right. You are the leader and it’s your reshuffle”.’
Later, she added: ‘I think Ed wanted more message discipline. I’ll live. These things happen.’ Last night a Labour source claimed Miss Abbott left ‘by mutual consent’, adding: ‘ Diane says we have changed on immigration. She has.’
She will be replaced by Luciana Berger. Labour’s former climate change spokesman.