Diane Abbott has accused Sir Keir Starmer of trying to ‘humiliate’ her as part of efforts to ‘clear out’ the Left from Labour.
The veteran MP, a close ally of former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, hit out at the Prime Minister and claimed he treated her as a ‘non-person’.
In a fresh round of Labour infighting, Ms Abbott, 70, issued a blast at Sir Keir’s behaviour during a row over racist comments made about her by a Tory donor.
She told the BBC’s Newsnight that Sir Keir ‘never reached out to me personally and did treat me as a non-person’ following remarks by businessman Frank Hester.
Earlier this year, Mr Hester was reported to have said Ms Abbott, the first black woman to be elected to Parliament, made him want to ‘hate all black women’ and that she ‘should be shot’.
Ms Abbott said: ‘If somebody was threatening to have you shot, you would have felt your party would have offered you more support, giving you advice on safety and security, even kind of commiserated with you. And none of that happened.’
Diane Abbott has accused Sir Keir Starmer of trying to ‘humiliate’ her as part of efforts to ‘clear out’ the Left from Labour
In a fresh round of Labour infighting, Ms Abbott, 70, issued a blast at Sir Keir’s behaviour during a row over racist comments made about her by a Tory donor
The veteran MP, a close ally of former party leader Jeremy Corbyn, hit out at the Prime Minister and claimed he treated her as a ‘non-person’
The Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP also criticised Sir Keir for his handling of her suspension from Labour in April last year.
She claimed she had been targeted as ‘one of the last leading left-wingers in the Parliamentary Labour Party’.
‘Keir Starmer is always saying, ‘It’s the new Labour Party’ … and how could you make it look more new than by getting rid of Diane Abbott?,’ she added.
The former shadow home secretary was suspended after she used a letter to a Sunday newspaper to suggest Jewish people don’t suffer racism.
The Labour whip was eventually restored to Ms Abbott just weeks before the general election in July, amid a huge row over whether she would be allowed to stand as a party candidate.
She told the BBC: ‘I think that Keir Starmer wanted to finish his clear-out of the left in the Parliamentary Labour Party and by writing a very ill-advised letter, I gave him the opportunity to move against me.
‘And I think what they were trying to do was to string out and string out the investigation.
‘So when a general election is around the corner, they could just move me out of the way as a Labour candidate because I wouldn’t be in the Parliamentary Labour Party, and they would parachute in someone else.’
Ms Abbott also claimed she had been offered a deal through a ‘third party’ that would have seen her stand down as an MP in exchange for having the whip restored.
‘I think the idea was that they would restore the whip in the morning,’ she added.
‘And then I would stand down in the afternoon; not the next day, not the next week, but in the afternoon. And I felt that was designed to humiliate me.’
A Labour Party spokesperson said: ‘Keir Starmer has great respect for Diane Abbott and she continues to be an inspiration to many.
‘There is no doubt that she has received the most abuse of any MP just because of her gender and the colour of her skin, and that is completely reprehensible and wrong.
‘The party, including Keir Starmer, vocally condemned Frank Hester’s vile comments and reached out to Diane at the time to offer support.
‘It’s simply wrong to say that there was any plan being pushed by the leadership to force her out. We continue to value Diane’s significant contribution to public life.’
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