Starmer may have to ‘consider his position’ says Abbott
Diane Abbott has claimed Sir Keir Starmer is attempting an anti-democratic coup in her constituency Labour Party, with the aim of replacing her as the candidate prior to the next election.
Ms Abbott was suspended by Labour pending an investigation in April, after publishing a letter to the Guardian in which she appeared to suggest Jewish People are not “all their lives subject to racism”.
She added: ”In pre-civil rights America, Irish people, Jewish people and Travellers were not required to sit at the back of the bus”.
Energy Secretary Grant Shapps accused the letter of being “hateful antisemitism”.
Ms Abbott eventually claimed the letter had merely been an “initial draft”, but Labour suspended her regardless.
READ MORE: Diane Abbott could stand against Labour at next general election
This afternoon she said the ongoing, four-month-long investigation into her “is fraudulent”.
Ms Abbott says she was told by the Labour Chief Whip to “actively engage” with the investigation, “but the Labour Whips are no long involved – it is now run entirely out of the Labour Party HQ, which reports to Keir Starmer”.
“There is no investigation”.
The longstanding Jeremy Corbyn ally argues “others have committed far more grave offences, and belated or grudging apologies have been wrung from them”.
“Yet they have been immediately excused as supporters of this leadership.”
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She adds: “The Labour Party has not charged me with antisemitism because they know it is untrue”.
Ms Abbott concludes that the Labour apparatus has “decapitated” the elected leadership of her Hackney constituency party in order to install Starmer allies.
All of this, she argues, is to “replace me as the candidate prior to the next election”.
“Taken together, the procedural impropriety, Starmer’s pronouncement of my guilt, the four-month delay in the investigation, the repeated refusal to try to reach any accommodation, all point in the direction that the verdict has already been reached.”
Ms Abbott is the longest serving black MP, elected to her seat in 1987.
She does not give any comment on her parliamentary future in light of, what she argues is, a “crushing of democracy”.
The Labour Party has been contacted for comment.
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