SENIOR Labour MP Diane Abbott was excluded from a meeting with Keir Starmer – with her treatment branded “appalling” by Westminster veterans.
The former shadow home secretary – who as the longest-serving female MP is called the “Mother of the House” – was kept out of a meeting which saw the Prime Minister address his troops in Parliament on Monday night.
She said: “I would have liked to query Keir Starmer at last night's meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party about the impact of his proposed cuts to welfare.
“Unfortunately I and other colleagues were told the meeting was full.
“Keen on dissent in other countries. Not so much here.”
Labour are facing some internal discontent over reported plans to slash welfare spending by £6 billion – in a move campaigners say will push people into poverty.
But reports suggest the meeting was fawning, with one MP telling Politico it mostly consisted of “people trying to crawl up the PM’s arse”.
GB News political editor Christopher Hope said Abbott should have been allowed in given her seniority.
He tweeted: “I thought it was appalling that Diane Abbott, the Mother of the House, had to sit with us journalists outside the PLP meeting last night until a friendly MP took her for a cup of tea.
“She had arrived after the meeting had started – but room should have been found for her inside for the meeting with Sir Keir Starmer.”
Katrina Faccenda, a former Labour councillor in Edinburgh who now sits as an independent, added: “Absolutely shocking and disrespectful to the people who voted for every Labour MP excluded.”
Abbott has been a fierce critic of Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party and he came in for criticism after leaving her suspended from the party for almost a year.
Senior figures intervened and eventually Abbott was allowed to run as the Labour candidate for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, which she has represented since 1987.
