Diane Abbott has accused the Conservatives of aiming to “play the race card” in the general election, saying the abuse she faced from Tory donor Frank Hester epitomised this approach. In a comment piece for the Guardian, the veteran MP said Hester’s remarks left her “upset but not surprised”, given the amount of racist abuse she receives. Hester said in a 2019 meeting that he did not hate all black women but seeing Abbott on TV meant “you just want to hate all black women because she’s there”. He also said she “should be shot”.
Abbott, the UK’s longest-serving black MP, who sits as an independent after losing the Labour whip last year, said she was also owed an apology from Labour over abusive comments about her revealed in internal party messages. She criticised the Commons speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, for not calling her during prime minister’s questions on Wednesday, after Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer discussed Hester’s comments.
Abbott wrote that she is “hardened to racist abuse”, receiving hundreds of abusive messages monthly. She argued that with Labour 20 points ahead in the polls, the Tories are desperate: “Their political trump card has always been low taxes and the sound management of the economy. But Liz Truss blew out of water any claim the Tories had to superior economic competence... So the only card the Tories have left to play is the race card, and they are going to play it ruthlessly.”
She identified this strategy in policies like the Rwanda deportation scheme and Conservative anxieties about extremism, which she says “is also a code word for Muslims”. Abbott also noted that the Metropolitan police had been fair in their policy towards pro-Palestine marches, but the Tories’ “underlying Islamophobic narrative” compels them to criticise law enforcement.
Turning to Labour, Abbott said she had not received an apology after a 2022 report by Martin Forde QC found she was the target of abuse in private WhatsApp messages among party staffers hostile to Jeremy Corbyn, showing “overt and underlying racism and sexism”. She lost the Labour whip in April 2023 after a letter in the Observer appeared to downplay racism against Jewish and Irish people. She wrote: “It will be both sad and strange if Starmer throws Britain’s first black woman MP out of the PLP because of an eight-line letter... But the most important thing is that the Labour party holds fast to its anti-racist tradition.”
