Veteran left-wing MP Diane Abbott repeated her apology for a letter she wrote to the Observer newspaper that saw her accused of antisemitism and suspended from the Labour Party.
In an interview with BBC Newsnight on Tuesday, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington in north London – one of the constituencies with the largest number of Jewish voters in the country – said: “I did apologise at the time, but I have no problem in apologising again. It was never my intention to cause offense at the time.”
Her letter, written in response to a column by author Tomiwa Owolade entitled "Racism in Britain is not a black and white issue. It’s far more complicated" sparked widespread outrage after she compared antisemitism with the type of prejudice that can be suffered by gingers.
At the time, she said that she "wholly and unreservedly” withdrew her remarks and that “the errors arose in an initial draft being sent."
Speaking to Victoria Derbyshire, she said: “What I was trying to talk about was race-based discrimination. Because, if you walk down the street nobody can tell whether you're Irish or anything else. But if I walk down the street, or my son walks down the street, people know straight away that he's black.”
The longtime ally of Jeremy Corbyn claimed she wasn’t “denying anti-Jewish prejudice” and said that “a lot of people did understand the point I was trying to make” but that it was “never her intention” to cause offense.
At the time, Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said her comments were antisemitic and suspended her from the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP).
Challenged by Derbyshire, she denied she was antisemitic. She said that as a representative for one of the biggest Jewish communities in the country, “if I was antisemitic my … Jewish constituents would have spotted it after 37 years.”
Abbott, the longest-serving female MP – known as the Mother of the House – was the first black woman elected to Parliament and has represented her seat since 1987.
The north London MP also told Newsnight that she thought Starmer used her suspension from the party to “clear out” the left-wingers in the parliamentary party. She continued, “by writing a very ill-advised letter I gave them the opportunity to move against me and I think what they were trying to do was to string out and string out the investigation [against her while she was suspended] so when a general election was around the corner, they could just move me out of the way.”
Prior to the general election in July, there was speculation that Abbott would be prevented from standing as a Labour candidate, however, she was officially endorsed by the party’s governing body, the National Executive Committee (NEC).
The veteran left-winger also claimed that she was made to feel like a “non-person” and that the Labour Party leadership didn’t reach out to her “in any meaningful way” after it was reported in March this year that Conservative donor Frank Hester had said Abbott made him “want to hate all black women” and that she “should be shot”.
