Diane Abbott has not spoken to Sir Keir Starmer properly in four years since the pair served in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, she has revealed.
The 71-year-old, who was elected as the first Black woman MP in 1987, says there is a clear divide in the Labour Party and accuses the prime minister of trying to “force the left out”.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Independent, Abbott, who is now the mother of the House as the longest continuously serving female MP, insists she does not regret standing up to Sir Keir and says she has been thanked by the more radical members of her party for her stance.
“I’ve not spoken to Keir Starmer in a very long time.”
In fact, she says, the last time they had a “proper” conversation “might have been when Jeremy was leader and we were both in the shadow cabinet”.
The pair’s relationship came under scrutiny during the election campaign earlier this year, following speculation Abbott may not be allowed to stand as a Labour candidate.
She had the whip suspended in 2023 after she wrote a letter to The Observer which stated that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people experience prejudice, but not racism in the same way as Black people, sparking an investigation which saw her sit as an independent MP.
The suggestion she might be barred from standing as the Labour candidate for Hackney resulted in something of a stand-off between Abbott and Labour’s leadership; eventually, she stood as the party’s candidate in the election and won by a large majority.
While she’s happy to be back in the party, Abbott claims the whole episode is an example of Sir Keir and the leadership’s attempts to oust the party’s left wing.
“Starmer has been trying to force the left out of the party,” she said: “That’s partly why the membership has dropped. I think it’s halved since he became leader; (...) under Jeremy, I think we had record numbers.
“Starmer and the people around him went to a lot of trouble to stop left-wingers standing as Labour candidates for constituencies. In my case, it wasn’t that they didn’t like the way I did my hair…! It was because I was one of the last reasonably prominent left-wingers left.
“I have to say, about a dozen or so of my colleagues on the left were very grateful that I stood up to Starmer because they were firmly of the belief that, had he succeeded in pushing me out of the party, he’d have turned on the remaining left MPs, and it’s because I stood up to him that they were saved. For now.”
In her memoir, entitled A Woman Like Me, Ms Abbott writes that “despite the ups and downs of my career, I will always belong to the Labour Party at heart”, though she says the party has “moved away from its founding purpose”.
As the first Black woman elected to parliament, Abbott has held a special significance for Black voters, despite facing some criticism for remaining loyal to the party despite its failures on race.
She says she’s often been the only Black girl and woman in the places she’s navigated from grammar school to the Home Office, to the TV station she worked at and the Labour Party.
“I’ve always worked in all-white environments, and that is very challenging. But you go into a kind of circular thing, right? You’ve got an institution, and they’ve got no Black people working there and, if they’re challenged on it, they say, ‘Oh... no one applies’.
“That’s what they want to be able to say, despite being in the middle of a city like London with a lot of Black people they could recruit. If you don’t apply – as a Black person – it becomes a self-reinforcing thing.
“I’m conscious that it’s very stressful, difficult and corrosive being the only Black person in an organisation and you don’t necessarily get support (...) though you should do in 2024.”
Ms Abbott, who has faced relentless racist and misogynistic abuse during her career, highlights how she has always made a point of employing Black staff since becoming an MP, despite “an assumption that they wouldn’t be suitable as parliamentary assistants or policy advisors”.
One unlikely believer in this assumption was the late Labour MP for Tottenham, Bernie Grant. Known for his staunch pro-Black politics, Ms Abbott’s revelation that her colleague warned her against hiring Black staff comes as quite the bombshell.
“I was taken aback, and I ignored it,” she said. “I’ve always had, in 37 years, I’ve always had my office led by a Black woman.
“That’s important to me. I think it’s helped me to be more resilient and also, if you’re just led by another Black woman, there are things that she’ll understand without being told.”
Given her friendship with Mr Grant, did Ms Abbott feel conflicted about disclosing information about him in her memoirs that may cast him in a bad light?
“I miss him,” Ms Abbott said. “One thing about Bernie, he was very strong and I think that story illustrated something important to say. I mean, I could quote from all sorts of colleagues in parliament things that might not reflect well on them, and I didn’t.
“But with Bernie, I was saying that even somebody with his commitment to Black politics wasn’t entirely immune from some stereotypes”.
Racist comments allegedly made by Conservative donor Frank Hester came to light earlier this year.
Mr Hester was reported to have said Ms Abbott made him want to “hate all Black women” and that she “should be shot”.
The remarks brought widespread condemnation, including from Sir Keir, who Ms Abbott says “never reached out to me personally and did treat me as a non-person”.
Around this time, a campaign was launched in Jamaica for Mr Hester to be stripped of his company’s contract with the nation’s Ministry of Health.
This never came to fruition, while his supporters referenced his business links with Jamaica as proof that he wasn’t a racist person.
In her memoirs, Ms Abbott is clearly buoyed by the support shown to her throughout the Hester scandal.
Being of Jamaican heritage, Ms Abbott said that “culturally, Jamaica is very much a part of me” and it features prominently in her memoirs.
When speaking about the land of her parents’ birth and how it has helped to mould her, the senior politician beamed with pride.
“We ate Jamaican food, spent a lot of time socially around other Jamaicans and, like a lot of Caribbean migrants of that generation, my parents always talked about home,” Ms Abbott said.
“So partly, I was brought up in a very Jamaican household, and then I went back to Jamaica with my mother in my early twenties, and really enjoyed absorbing myself in the culture. So, it's always somewhere I go back to, to not just enjoy the sunshine but to restore myself”.
Reflecting on a four-decade career in politics and what may lie around the corner Ms Abbott said she may write another book entitled Mother of The House.
“My friends are saying that I should, so perhaps that will be my next project,” she smiled.
