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James O'Brien: Why I can't defend Diane Abbott
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Jul 19, 2025
James O’Brien examines Diane Abbott’s legacy after the former shadow home secretary was suspended by the party for the second time. Abbott had the whip removed two years ago after claiming that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people “undoubtedly experience prejudice” that is “similar to racism.” But she added at the time: “It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice. But they are not all their lives subject to racism.” This week, Ms Abbott was asked if she regrets the comments to which she replied, "no, not at all." Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #jamesobrien #ukpolitics #labour #government #dianeabbott #LBC LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
View Video Transcript
0:00
It's a conversation I want to have, it's a conversation that we should have
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but it's a strangely dispiriting conversation, because, well, we've had it before, would be one reason for that
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And the second is, if you had a bingo card of things that I say a lot on the programme
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it would change, wouldn't it, over the years? Where would two things can be true at the same time appear
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How high up on the list, if we go in order of frequency
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the things that are most frequently said, two things can be true at the same time and in many ways i think the reason why that's become a
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bit of a refrain for us is is because it it it flies in the face of of what phonings used to be
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about didn't it i mean for example on the john to road story um it would once have been the case
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that a bunch of white men who were my age ring up to tell the white man who's my age presenting the
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program why the the n-word shouldn't be offensive because black people use it in rap songs and
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therefore they should be able to use it as well it'd be a bit like the stop and search phone-ins
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that we used to have in 1962 that well all right quite recently where a bunch of white men ring in
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to tell a white man uh why it's perfectly reasonable for black men to be treated as if
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they're guilty until proven innocent although that should not be extended to anybody else obviously
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and I think that the nuance we seek to introduce the stories has made most conversations more
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interesting so Diane Abbott I don't believe is anti-semitic but I do believe that she had to be
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suspended from the Labour Party yesterday after withdrawing her apology and her withdrawal of
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comments that she made a couple of years ago and and shall i tell you what i think happened
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and i'm gonna need a bit of policing today i'm gonna need a bit of tone policing i've already
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pointed out that i'm poised to weigh in um in defense of a middle-aged white man who stands
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accused of using the n-word or not defense but expressing a point of sympathy whether or not
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it's right that i should feel sorry for john to road um but i'm not going to lie to you at this
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point in time I do and I'm across the detail I think that's quite important I also this isn't a
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boast this is just an attempt to understand how the media works I said to colleagues yesterday I
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bet he sang along to something you read into that story and thought what has actually happened what
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is the word the way the story is being written there's only one word it can be I would probably
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only one word it could be or a p word or an n word and it's probably the n word and i would not be
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surprised because of the way that he's expressing complete befuddlement at what's happened to him or
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indeed at the fact that he can't remember i would not be surprised if he sang along to a rap track
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and someone said you can't do that and he said oh sorry i did yeah of course like that that's all
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so i said that yesterday and um lo and behold front page of the sun today tells precisely that
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story so I conscious of the fact that I what the word I want is it an inherent bias white privilege white privilege possibly here I am feeling a bit of sympathy for the middle white bloke and just profound frustration at the middle black lady
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I don't know. And that's the point about two things can be true at the same time
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That may be the correct position to have arrived at. And it has nothing to do with inherent biases or indeed with white privilege
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I think Diane Abbott forgot what she wrote. so I think Diane Abbott when asked if she stood by the comments that she made a couple of years ago
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I think in her mind and this I may be doing her a disservice here because I'm going to cast some
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aspersions upon her mental acuity I think she forgot that she essentially equated the Jewish
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experience to being ginger haired and I think that what she remembered was that she claimed being
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black being visibly a member of a minority an ethnic minority creates a very different
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environment and a very different experience from uh signifiers that are not immediately obvious
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if you like for example being jewish or being a member of the traveler community
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um that was the point she made jewish people gypsy roma traveler face similar levels of
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prejudice to people with red hair was such a stupid observation that her apology and withdrawal
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became immediately inevitable and i would say that the only thing you can say with certainty
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today is that she has lied because either she lied when she apologized and withdrew the comments or
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she lied yesterday when she stood by them or she forgot what she said the first time around
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and thought she was defending the, for me, perfectly reasonable observation that being a victim of skin-based racism is an experience
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that Jewish people and traveller people can't really have. That seems to me to be an observation which gets filed under obvious
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So here we are. She has lost the whip again. She lost it two years ago and she's lost it again today
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I think I got handed my backside on a plate yesterday when I sought to defend Keir Starmer's suspension
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of four backbenchers who've led and been active in various rebellions. I didn't change my mind
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but I recognised that I was on a bit of a hiding to nothing, particularly in the case of the York MP
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I can't see the same thing happening today. I really can't. I can't see anybody defending it successfully
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the argument or the claim that being Jewish is like being ginger
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and therefore not something that should be taken as seriously as skin-based racism
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How do you want to do this? Should we do a ding-dong? Or do you want to tell me what you think happened
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0345 60 60 973 is the number you need. And the reason why this is dispiriting
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the reason why I went off on one of my customary tangents at the top of the hour is because
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I would really like Diane Abbott's legacy to be the one that I think her life and career deserves
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Nobody has been more abused than Diane Abbott Sadiq Khan probably comes a distant second But when it comes to the levels of vicious abuse directed at politicians Diane Abbott is in a class of her own
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That's not an opinion, that is counting. And of course, it is largely racist in motivation
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And if you don't think it is, then you'd have to tell me why, if you think it's down to competence or clownishness
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why is Jacob Rees not mog, not in constant receipt of vituperative and vicious
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hate communications that involve the police being called on a regular basis
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I can't see how she now avoids this millstone being hung around her neck for the second time
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and that's what I find dispiriting. She's the mother of the House, the first black female
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member of Parliament, a visionary figure, a pioneer of diversity and race relations
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A wonderful example to everybody, really, but particularly to people who might have been growing up believing that they had no place in Parliament or that politics was not a business or a world for them
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And yet she does this. So we don't really do on a scale of one to ten how bad is this
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And I don't want to do that today because I'm under no illusions about how bad it is
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It was such a stupid thing to do the first time around
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Do you remember that she claimed she'd accidentally sent the wrong letter? That she'd sent a draft by accident to the Observer
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and that that was the reason she gave for such bilge ending up in print
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And now, given the opportunity to simply reiterate her regret and her apology
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she decided to do the polar opposite and doubled down on the original offence
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The offence that she both acknowledged and excused by claiming that it was an accidental keystroke
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that a draft was sent to the Observer newspaper rather than the letter that she originally wanted to send
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That seems to be missing from a lot of the coverage. I can quote you the exact words that were used
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She said she wanted to wholly and unreservedly withdraw my remarks and then blame the errors on, and I quote
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an initial draft being sent. This is why it's so frustrating for people that want Diane's legacy to be the one that she actually deserves
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You can't overlook this. You can't write it off. You can't move past it
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She literally said that she wholly and unreservedly withdrew her remarks, which were objectively stupid and quite possibly profoundly offensive
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and chalked it up to an error, to an initial draft being sent instead of the final bit
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So even people that want to defend her have to call her a liar
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So if you want to defend her now, you have to say she was lying when she claimed that it was wholly unreservedly
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something she should apologise for and a consequence of an initial draft being sent
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instead of the actual letter that she wanted to send to the observer
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So she's got herself and anybody sticking up for her into an almighty mess
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It's so weird that this ghost, if you like, has been resurrected at a time when she was back in the party
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back in Parliament. 10 is the time So here you go This is from Alex If you listen to what she said yesterday she fully explains what she means Stop spinning it for your own interest You see these people
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they are objectively ridiculous. She literally said that she wholly and unreservedly
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withdrew her original remarks and that they were a consequence of an error
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of an initial draft being sent in error. But look at these people queuing up to defend her
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If you're defending her for what she did yesterday, you're claiming that she lied two years ago
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so she is either an idiot or a liar there's no third path here and it's it's appalling that she's
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ended up in this situation but the only person to blame for her ending up in this situation
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is her i think today oh three four five six oh six oh nine seven three being the number that you need
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um i i just tell me what you think we don't need to have a row we can have a row if you want
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But just tell me what you think. That is my quite carefully considered and reluctantly quite cross conclusion
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You can't have it both ways. You can't claim that you stand by what was said
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while simultaneously having someone else remind you that you withdrew it wholeheartedly and unreservedly
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and claimed that it was all a terrible mistake. It's like a mad illustration of footballification going out of control
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I like Diane Abbott, therefore I will defend her whatever she's done. Well, she's described her own behavior as indefensible
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I'm still defending her. Well, then you're defending the thing that she calls indefensible. I am defending the indefensible
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And you are biased. But she said it was a mistake. So, it's 16 minutes after 10
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I didn't know where we were going to go with this. And now I do
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I have laid out my thoughts. And I would like you to do the same
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You don't actually have to use my introduction today as the trampoline trampoline from which you leap into this discussion you can come at it with your own monologue you can
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come at it with your own thoughts your own thinking it's a story of our times and it's a horrible
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story in so many ways because Diane Abbott's legacy should be glorious and a large part of the reason
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why it won't be is because of the racist idiots that have plagued her political career at every
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step and completely ignored and denigrated the people who hate her for being black hate her for
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being a woman and most of all hate her for being in parliament as a black woman but you can't let
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that crowd out the fact that this is an almighty clangor this is a disastrous intervention and yet
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more evidence of the labor party's historic ability to snatch disgrace and defeat from the
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jaws of even landslide victories what do you think 0345 6060 973 is the number you need i don't think
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she's anti-Semitic. I think what she said was incredibly stupid and almost certainly offensive
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although as a middle-aged white man, it's not me who would feel personal offense. And yet to attempt
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to defend her now is to accuse her of lying then. I can't do a phone-in on how anyone could be so
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stupid that they can't see what I'm now describing. Even by my standards, that would be condescending
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and unproductive. But seriously, how can anyone be so stupid as to not see what we've just laid out
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If she withdrew unreservedly and wholeheartedly and explained that it had all been a terrible mistake
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she can't now say that she sticks by it without making herself a liar and you a fool
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