Diane Abbott suspended from Labour Party after controversial comments on Jews

Diane Abbott has been suspended as a Labour MP this evening after claiming she had no regrets about comments made in 2023 suggesting Jewish people don't suffer racism "all their lives".

In a new BBC interview this morning Ms Abbott, the longest serving female MP in parliament, said she does not regret her remarks made in a letter to the Observer newspaper in April 2023.

Ms Abbott suggested that people of colour experience racism differently to Irish, Jewish and Traveller communities, adding the latter groups are not subject to racism "all their lives". She later apologised and withdrew the remarks, claiming the letter had been an initial draft that was submitted to the newspaper prematurely. However asked today whether she regrets the row that saw her suspended from the Labour Party for a year, she defiantly replied: "No, not at all."

This evening a Labour Party spokesman told the Express: "Diane Abbott has been administratively suspended from the Labour Party, pending an investigation. We cannot comment further while this investigation is ongoing."

It is understood that Ms Abbott's administrative suspension by the Labour Party, pending investigation, has the automatic effect of suspending the Labour whip in the House of Commons.

The news means that five Labour MPs have lost the whip in 24 hours, after Sir Keir Starmer sacked four MPs yesterday for persistently rebelling over welfare cuts and other matters.

Ms Abbott's suspension comes after Angela Rayner, the Deputy Prime Minister, said earlier she was disappointed that the longest-serving Labour MP had defended the offensive comments.

Ms Rayner played a leading role during the general election in getting Ms Abbott re-admitted as a Labour MP so she could stand for parliament again, as her year-long suspension had barred her from standing as a Labour candidate.

She said Ms Abbott's intervention on the BBC this morning represented a "real challenge" for the Labour Party and it was "not good" she had performed a u-turn on her original apology.

Speaking to the BBC the Hackney MP said: "Clearly, there must be a difference between racism which is about colour and other types of racism because you can see a Traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street, you don't know.

"You don't know unless you stop to speak to them or you're in a meeting with them.

"But if you see a black person walking down the street, you see straight away that they're black. They are different types of racism."

Asked if she believed she had done anything wrong, Ms Abbott hit back: "I just think that it's silly to try and claim that racism which is about skin colour is the same as other types of racism."

"I just... I don't know why people would say that."

Ms Abbott, who entered Parliament in 1987 as Britain's first black woman MP, also claimed the party leadership had tried to force her out. She said: "I got tremendous support locally. In the end, Keir Starmer and the people around him had to back off."

She added there had been "hints" she would be offered a seat in the House of Lords if she agreed to step down - but she insisted: "I was never going to do that. And I'm a Labour MP today, and I'm grateful."

Two years ago, Sir Keir Starmer condemned her comments as overtly "antisemitic".

He argued: "In my view what she said was to be condemned, it was antisemitic. Diane Abbott has suffered a lot of racial abuse over many, many years ... that doesn't take away from the fact that I condemn the words she used and we must never accept the argument that there's some sort of hierarchy of racism.

"I will never accept that, the Labour party will never accept that, and that's why we acted as swiftly as we did yesterday."