Tories and Labour too slow to decry racism, says Abbott

Diane Abbott has hit out at the Conservatives and Labour, accusing both parties of "shocking" racism in the Tory donor scandal.

- KATE DEVLIN

The MP, who sits as an independent and was dragged into the centre of the race row, turned her fire on Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak after the pair clashed over the issue at PMQs yesterday.

Mr Sunak has refused to hand back a £10m donation from businessman Frank Hester after he allegedly said Ms Abbott made him “want to hate all Black women” and that she should be “shot”.

Writing in The Independent, Britain’s longest-serving Black MP described his words as “outrageously racist and sexist” and added: “I am afraid long-term experience teaches me that the Tory party has long been a source of whipping up racism in this country, including directed at me personally.”

She also attacked Sir Keir and said: “The position of the current leadership of the Labour Party is disappointing, which seemed equally reluctant at the outset to call out either racism or sexism. Instead, the entire focus was on the demand that the Tories give Hester back his money, which is surely not the primary point in this case.”

Ms Abbott, who was a Labour MP for more than three decades until she was suspended last year, said her former party had initially failed to label Mr Hester's alleged comments against her as racist and sexist. She went on to condemn the “shocking levels of racism and sexism from within the Labour Party, again much of it directed against me personally”.