Labour officials will decide on Diane Abbott’s future, says shadow minister
The Guardian says Diane Abbott’s local party and Labour officials will decide whether she can stand again at the next election, a shadow minister has said, after Abbott lost the Labour whip for her comments about racism.
Abbott made comments suggesting that Jewish, Irish and Traveller people were not subject to racism “all their lives”.
John Mann, the former Labour MP who is now a peer and advises the government on antisemitism, suggested it might be best if Abbott, an MP since 1987, did not stand again for her London constituency of Hackney North and Stoke Newington.
But Pat McFadden, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, said the next steps would not be decided yet. “I’m sure that if she has made an apology, it is genuine. But it will be for the chief whip and the leader to decide what happens next,” he told Sky News.