Keir Starmer “doesn’t have a feel” for the Labour Party or politics in general and his team lacks the skills to run the country, veteran Labour MP Diane Abbott has said. The Telegraph has more.
In an interview, the veteran Left-wing backbencher claimed that the team around the Prime Minister lacks the skills to run the country.
She also said that, while she had considered standing down before the election in July, briefings about her being banned from running by Labour had led her to conclude: “Bugger that.”
Ms. Abbott was suspended from the party in April last year after claiming that Jewish people did not experience racism “all their lives”, remarks she then withdrew and apologised for.
She sat as an independent MP for more than a year before Sir Keir restored the whip at the start of the campaign in May, saying she would be free to stand for Labour.
Speaking to the BBC’s Newsnight Extra, Ms. Abbott, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, in London, said: “One of the things people forget or never knew about Keir Starmer is that he was only a member of the Labour Party for a very short time before he became leader.”
Asked why that was relevant, she replied: “Because he doesn’t have a feel for the Labour Party and politics in general. People will say ‘he smashed all those Left-wingers’, but that’s the skill set of the people around him. Running the country, not so much.”
Questioned on how Sir Keir had fared during his first six months in Government, Ms. Abbott said: “We’re going to have to see how things work out. What I will say is I never thought I’d say a good word about Tony Blair. But one thing Tony Blair was good at was empathy – and Starmer isn’t so great at empathy.
“The people around him think they’re so clever because they won by a landslide. Actually his proportion of the vote, I think it’s 33%. His proportion of the vote is relatively small, and I think it would be a mistake to think ‘ooh, we won by a landslide, therefore we can get away with anything’. That’s not going to work.”
Ms. Abbott has been vocal in opposing a number of decisions by the Labour Government to date, including cuts to the winter fuel allowance and refusing to compensate Waspi women.
While she insisted it was “still exciting to have a Labour Government”, the 71 year-old – who has represented her constituency for 37 years– had a clear message for Sir Keir. Asked what her hopes were for 2025, she said: “I hope that Syria becomes a stable nation state, and I hope that the Labour Party stops making mistakes.”
Worth reading in full.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Abbot is one of the at least 192 MPs supporting the Climate and Nature Action Bill. Whatever chalice she might be offering, it’s most certainly poisoned.
Indeed. Had a good laugh. Fatbutt criticising the Starmtroopers….please. Who next? Lammy will claim that Starmtrooper is not as intelligent as say…himself (or a door)?
No no, this cannot be!
Will the real Diane Abbott please stand up?
Abacus is a wrong ‘un. Always has been, always will be.
I can’t believe she’s 71yrs though! I had to read that bit again.
Way past retirement. Retirement for all those polishing the green leather should be 65. No exceptions.
Renowned for being the first black MP leaving you wondering why they couldn’t find somebody competent.
Yeah I don’t know what she’s chirping about- she wouldn’t have been any better
More interesting revelations due to the excellent sleuthing skills of Charlotte Gill. It transpires that the two Led By Donkeys members who made up the Kingsnorth Six, part of a Greenpeace protest who scaled a power station, had their defense prepared by Starmer, which led to them going free. I guess it depends if you’re pro or anti any of the government narratives whether you get sent down or not. Anyway, there’s more interesting interwoven deets revealed by Charlotte here;
https://x.com/CharlotteCGill/status/1871336728033984869
So long as your motives are “saving the planet, the chances are you will either get off or have a lighter sentence. After all you are batting for the same team as the government, aren’t you? So why would they hammer one of their own team?
The elite do not need to know about politics or anything else. They know that a policy statement is as good as it being so.
they have lived a life of no responsibility so the idea of actual delivery.
I remember my parent’s view of Abbott before she became an MP while she was working for the GLC and then as an elected member of Westminster City Council. They were extremely unimpressed, and I can’t say that I have ever held her in much regard although once or twice she has acted in a principled manner.
As she has got older she has become more mellow as most of us do, but then she also sometimes displays confusion that an MP really should recognise and then decide to stand down as a serving member of the HoC.
I suspect she would only be missed in a small part of the body politic when that occurs.
“Eh eh eh the fact of the matter is……..”—-“Eh eh eh the reality is………..”—A dummy
We don’t need a dimwit like Dianne Abbot to tell us that this Labour government is a lethal combination of ideology and incompetence.
Slightly scary when even someone as ‘sharp’ as her spots it though eh
Abbot – one of the most divisive and objectionable MPs in my lifetime, A simple numeracy test would surely preclude her, and many others, from holding any public office.
numeracy and the ability to choose a pair of shoes and tie the laces, without help.
We know we are in deep, deep trouble when it is left to Diane Abbot to make sense and give an uncharacteristically cogent, succinct and accurate appraisal of the Labour Government (such as it is).
Wow, it comes to something to be told you are not up to the job by Diane Abbott. But it seems she is only saying something that many of them are when it comes to Never Here Kier. Sounds like the clock is ticking for him as it is for Rachel from Accounts. She may go first once we are in recession and then when Labour get hammered in the May elections – unless they cheat and postpone them – Two Tier may well be Outa Here Kier.
2TK making Dianne look god