The past 24 hours have sent Labour’s unseemly shenanigans over Diane Abbott’s disciplinary case to top of the news agenda. The contradictory messaging and off-the-record briefings have exposed a rotten core in Keir Starmer’s Labour.
In March, he told the LBC journalist Lewis Goodall that the “independent” investigation into the MP was “ongoing”. And just last week, on a media round, Starmer was asked about this again, and again hid behind the disciplinary process.
But now we know, as the BBC Newsnight team reported, that this “independent” process had actually finished in December, giving Abbott a formal warning and compelling her to do an online course, which she completed in February.
Yet since that time, the party has put numerous Shadow Cabinet members on the media, as well as Starmer, to all give the same line that Labour’s independent process was ongoing. Shortly after the BBC reported about the timing of the investigation, Labour restored the whip to Abbott. Shadow Cabinet sources tell me the Labour leader has since been bombarded with frustrated shadow ministers who have, they claim, inadvertently been forced to lie to the media about this.
On Monday, the Labour leader made the opening speech of his election campaign, boasting of his own integrity, but warning that because of the Tories, “we are at a dangerous new point close to crossing a rubicon on trust”. Yes, indeed we are – and the mixed messaging surrounding Abbott has contributed. The bracing revelation is that Starmer has the same unfaithful relationship with the truth as his original opponent, Boris Johnson.
John McTernan, a former special adviser to Tony Blair, who to his credit has consistently called for the whip to be restored promptly to Abbott, told Times Radio that whoever is responsible for this shambolic and elongated process “should hang their head in shame”. But, we know who is ultimately responsible: Keir Starmer. There is no point trying to shift the blame onto senior staff or the Chief Whip – they operate under his mandate.
As I wrote in March, the Labour leadership spent months attempting a grubby backroom deal in which they would restore the whip to Abbott in exchange for her to stand down at the next election. The staff and politicians involved in that are the direct appointees of Starmer. One Shadow Cabinet source described it to me as “the boys let loose in the sweet shop” as they try to parachute their factional allies into safe Labour seats, such as Abbott’s stronghold of Hackney North and Stoke Newington.
On Tuesday night various reporters were told by “senior Labour sources” that Abbott would be barred from standing. On Wednesday morning, she herself posted on X: “I am very dismayed that numerous reports suggest I have been barred as a candidate.”
Starmer said on Wednesday: “That’s not true. No decision has been taken”. But this is obfuscation – he sits on and controls the party’s National Executive Committee which will take this decision. It meets early next week. He could say whether or not he wants her to be the Labour candidate.
The issue here is the hypocrisy and double standards. What Diane Abbott wrote in a letter to The Observer back in April 2023 – that suggested Jewish, Irish and Traveller people were not subject to racism “all their lives” – was offensive. She retracted and apologised on the day, without equivocation.
She was nevertheless suspended and put under investigation. This did not happen in the case of Barry Sheerman – like Abbott an MP of longstanding – who tweeted “apparently there has been a bit of a run on silver shekels”, later adding that “Richard Desmond and Philip Green [two Jewish businessmen] were on the original list for seats in the House of Lords”. Sheerman deleted the tweets and apologised, but was not suspended and no investigation was opened.
Similarly, Labour MP Neil Coyle was found by a parliamentary investigation to have racially abused a journalist on the Parliamentary Estate. Separately, he was also found by an NEC inquiry to have sexually harassed a young party member. Despite these offences, he had the whip promptly restored and is expected to be endorsed as a Labour candidate.
So why is Diane Abbott being treated differently? Is it racism, sexism, factionalism, the fact that she was part of the Corbyn era, or a combination of all? Either way it looks appalling, especially for the Labour Party.
There is a wider impact of this factionalism and dishonesty – not just on integrity in politics, but with Labour’s electoral base in some areas of the country. Numerous MPs report the loss of young activists in local parties, the loss of many Muslim councillors, members and voters over Gaza, and increasingly a disengagement from black voters too. The rise of Greens and well organised independents in the local elections point to these anecdotes being borne out in elections too.
Even within the stultifying confines of UK’s first-past-the-post electoral system, which channels us into the two-party binary of Tories or Labour, resistance is breaking out. The Tories have their own immediate problems (look at any poll or election result over the last two years), but Labour’s alienating of its own base may leave it vulnerable in the years ahead, and may produce some startling results even on 4 July.
Ironically, the large poll leads over the Tories have made the most factional elements of the party even more hubristic and arrogant that they can purge their internal opponents without cost. In the short term they may be right, but ultimately it may be their downfall.
Andrew Fisher is a former executive director of policy for the Labour Party