[Malcolm Armsteen]

They really don't understand.
Is it something about the hard left mindset, or are they merely stupid?

[Philip Marlow]

She's a fool who doesn't realise it's time to go, same as Jez.

I'm not sure I'd follow through against her though. I cut her some slack for all the racist filth she has to put up with.

Well, that and the fact that, if she does end up being expelled, it’s got the sum total of fuck all to do with racism and everything to do with her being of the wrong faction and a hate figure of decades standing. I’m not even defending her, really. It’s just that if the less-than-honourable member for Bermondsey’s racist piss artistry and sex pest antics can be overlooked then I fail to be how Abbott gets the boot. And if she does then it might be time to retrieve the Forde report from behind whichever sofa it’s been deposited down the back of. Give it another read. For all that no one who matters gives a shit about it.

[The Weeping Angel]

Have you actually read The Forde Report? Here's a good summary of that report

https://robfrancis.substack.com/p/thing ... um=reader2

Claim: Forde shows there was a hierarchy of racism in the Labour Party.

The report does not go as far as establishing this. Forde is very careful to always couch this as a perception of respondents; on pages 5 and 81, it is discussed as a theme of the submissions to the inquiry; page 90 offers a flavour of these submissions; page 97 says submissions are suggestive of a hierarchy of racism; page 112 begins the claim with “some would argue”.

Forde does not explicitly find a hierarchy of racism in the Labour Party. However the discriminatory culture and the racism described on, amongst other places, pages 81-83 makes for grim reading and is certainly something the party should address in very short order.

Claim: The Labour Right “weaponised” antisemitism as a way of attacking Corbyn.

This one is supported by Forde, although it’s a very partial interpretation; on page 7, the report states that “both factions treated [antisemitism] like a factional weapon”.

This is one place where Forde goes very badly wrong; the report attempts to “both sides” Labour antisemitism, treating racism as a factional battle with fault on both sides. But of course there is no equivalence between antisemitism and opposition to antisemitism, and anyone attacking Corbyn over antisemitism is surely to be commended. Stephen Pollard has written very well on this point, so I’ll let his article respond here.

As for Abbot she did her own legs in by sending that letter to the Observer the cynic in me wonders whether she's been trying to get expelled delibrately in order to make herself a martyr.

[davidjay]

They really don't understand.
Is it something about the hard left mindset, or are they merely stupid?

It's their mindset. They are the intelligensia, they are never wrong, the rest of us are either malicious or jealous.

[Abernathy]

I don’t quite see how Neil Coyle’s well-documented misbehaviour has been “overlooked”.

[Tubby Isaacs]

She's a fool who doesn't realise it's time to go, same as Jez.

I'm not sure I'd follow through against her though. I cut her some slack for all the racist filth she has to put up with.

Well, that and the fact that, if she does end up being expelled, it’s got the sum total of fuck all to do with racism and everything to do with her being of the wrong faction and a hate figure of decades standing. I’m not even defending her, really. It’s just that if the less-than-honourable member for Bermondsey’s racist piss artistry and sex pest antics can be overlooked then I fail to be how Abbott gets the boot. And if she does then it might be time to retrieve the Forde report from behind whichever sofa it’s been deposited down the back of. Give it another read. For all that no one who matters gives a shit about it.

I'd put it a fair bit stronger than "in the wrong faction". She's full on Stop the War crank. She once made astonishingly racist comments about European nurses who were busting their arses in the NHS. She also accused London schools (which were improving very fast, with immense effort from the then Labour government) of being racist too, when she sent her son private. Schools really didn't need her telling the public that.

But as I say, I wouldn't expel her. It's a bit more than "apologize and move on" though, which I think has been her attitude. I thought Naz Shah was hard done by losing the whip, but everyone agrees she was proactive and good afterwards. I've not heard of her doing anything special to engage to put it right. Coyle (who I agree got very lucky) has certainly done that.

I think alcoholism is a genuinely difficult area. It obviously shouldn't be a get out of jail card, but can somebody who has suffered from it and then entered prolonged recovery have some sort of fresh start? But of course a left MP doing a Coyle wouldn't have got this second chance.

[Abernathy]

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... ane-abbott

Protest increases pressure on Starmer to restore Labour whip to Diane Abbott

Realpolitik, part 385 : Really? There is literally nothing to be gained for Labour by restoring the Labour whip to Abbott.
And potentially, plenty (4 or 5 opinion polling points? ) to be lost.

The ironic psrt of it is - and I've heard this argument put forward in respect of Corbyn, too - that without the removal of the whip, Abbott, who is now 70 years old, would quite probably have decided to retire at the coming election in any case. But I don't really believe that, about Corbyn, or about Abbott.

Given Keir Starmer's necessary and quite cold-blooded ruthlessness up to this point, I see no prospect of any way back for Abbott. And nor should there be.

[Andy McDandy]

Well, the right wing press have already decided on the headlines - if he keeps her out he's a ruthless bastard and let's reprint all those things; while if he re-admits her he's in thrall to the hard left, and let's reprint all those things.

Corbyn and Abbott - from party leaders to the 2020s equivalent of the PIE.

[Bones McCoy]

Aside from the rights and wrongs of re-whipping Diane Abbott, the timing would be absolutely awful.

The hostile peace between Israel and the West Bank has collapsed with the Hamas attacks.
Poor old Diane's not renowned for good judgement, or keeping her own counsel when questioned on such matters.
It'll be a matter of hours before she's "gotcha'd" into saying something ill-judged which will dominate headlines for months.

Like John Cleese: I prefer her earlier work.

[Abernathy]

Very good point about shockingly bad timing.

In an alternative timeline, Jeremy Corbyn is still leading the Labour Party, when, just as the crucial last party conference before an unbelieveably crucial general election is getting underway, Hamas carries out the atrocities that we saw on Saturday. Jeremy Corbyn, as leader of the Labour Party, is asked for his views. "Erm, well, all attacks are of course unacceptable......." he mutters. Bang- next election lost in an instant. Mind you. it'd have been lost anyway.

[mattomac]

Well he was going anyhow, I've actually forgotten the name of the Corbyn candidate, I know she was mates with Angela Rayner. I'm getting Wrong Bailey but that was the piss take.

[Abernathy]

Well he was going anyhow, I've actually forgotten the name of the Corbyn candidate, I know she was mates with Angela Rayner. I'm getting Wrong Bailey but that was the piss take.

The eminently forgettable Rebecca Long-Bailey. And yes, I know Corbyn was always going to respond to the Hamas atrocities the way he did. My point was to imagine, and illustrate, why that was a continuing disaster for Labour.

[mattomac]

Well he was going anyhow, I've actually forgotten the name of the Corbyn candidate, I know she was mates with Angela Rayner. I'm getting Wrong Bailey but that was the piss take.

The eminently forgettable Rebecca Long-Bailey. And yes, I know Corbyn was always going to respond to the Hamas atrocities the way he did. My point was to imagine, and illustrate, why that was a continuing disaster for Labour.

Sunak's Corbyn line would resonate a lot better no doubt.

[kreuzberger]

My goodness, what a day.

A Black woman, whose very existence causes a privileged man to hate Black women and wish her to die in a hail of gunfire, is humiliatingly forced to sit passively by as privileged men discuss her predicament.

Hoyle has some questions to answer. "Yebbut, that's how we do things 'round here", is a wholly and utterly inadequate response.

Shame on this parody of a parliament.

[Abernathy]

Hoyle has, frankly, been a massive disappointment as Speaker since he first sat in that chair.
He doesn’t seem to have a clue about how to keep order, with PMQs constantly punctuated by him wittering on about how he wants to hear what the PM is saying. And of course the debacle of the SNP opposion day motion on Gaza. I thnk he was right to select Labour’s amendment as well as the governments, but he should have had the guts to stand by his decision instead of coming out with abjectly grovelling apologies .

Refusing to call Diane Abbott in the circmstances was pretty fucking inexcusable.

[Bones McCoy]

A very bad day at the "mother or parliaments".
Bad among a run of 13 piss poor years.

I observe two things.

None of the news channels bemoaning Diane Abbot's shut-out has yet bothered to invite her to an interview.

Several going with "Starmer is duty bound to re-admit her now", let's unpick that for a moment.
Titchy Tetchy Rishi would double down pairing "emergency Corbyn" with "emergency Abbott".
The opposition shouldn't be in the business of letting a dying government and their racist outriders determine party discipline matters.
A rudderless weakling like Sunack, or Cameron before him would be steered like that.
I have higher hopes for Keir Starmer's Labour party.


That's a harsh dismissal of Diane Abbott, but she made unfortunate choices long ago.

[kreuzberger]

That's a harsh dismissal of Diane Abbott, but she made unfortunate choices long ago.

She deserves the abuse and the billionaire's bullet? Or just being sidelined while the white men and the coconuts do the big chat?

[Bones McCoy]

That's a harsh dismissal of Diane Abbott, but she made unfortunate choices long ago.

She deserves the abuse and the billionaire's bullet? Or just being sidelined while the white men and the coconuts do the big chat?

Maybe I expressed myself poorly.

I believe Diane Abbot deserves a voice in this talk.
I don't believe a tory cunt donor's terrible views should grant her automatic re-admission to Labour.

[Crabcakes]

Dianne herself has now waded in, and immediately binned off any recently accrued goodwill from her appalling treatment by a Tory donor by somehow implying that it’s all really about not restoring the whip to her. Which of course was taken away from her in the first place because she made some ham-fisted and undeniably blatantly racist claims and then attempted to cover them up with an excuse about drafts barely any better than Hester’s non-apology. And as an added bonus she retweeted a post recently suggesting antisemitism in Labour under Corbyn was a hoax.

Talk about making life difficult for yourself.

[Philip Marlow]

I suspect much of the rest of the article is going to cause people to spit blood, but regarding That Bastard Letter, Gary Younge put it rather well.

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfr ... ane-abbott

Last year she sent an appalling letter to the Observer claiming that “Irish, Jewish and Traveller people” do not suffer racism “all their lives”. The criticism that the letter was antisemitic was, if anything, too narrow. She was wrong about everything and everyone, not just Jews.

I’ll own to not being as au fait with the disciplinary measures available to Labour’s top brass as I might be, but I’d long since assumed that the whip was going to remain withdrawn for long enough to leave her with the choice of retirement at the next election or running for her seat as an independent, and thus automatic expulsion.