Keir Starmer and his allies have been using the local election campaign as a trial run ahead of the all-important general election next year. For the last three and a half weeks, they have been laser-focused on campaigning on doorsteps, pushing out Twitter attack adverts and setting out what they would do in office. But 10 days before the key electoral test, Labour finds itself desperately trying to stave off yet another racism row. After Diane Abbott was swiftly suspended from the party for her remarks in a letter to the Observer, speculation has swirled on how long officials will take to investigate her comments and decide on her fate. Her allies remain largely silent. “She doesn’t deserve this, but at the same time, her comments are indefensible,” one said. They acknowledge the severity of her mistake, but lament the fact that the first black woman MP – a trailblazer in British politics – should be the one in this position. The leftwingers among them fear that any public expression of sympathy could lead to them also losing the whip, especially since the leadership has blocked others from standing. But one Starmer ally noted that the Labour leader took over from Jeremy Corbyn with the huge task of lifting the spirits of a “defeated and demoralised party” wounded by an almighty internal battle over antisemitism. They believe his determination to stamp out all forms of discrimination will ensure he does not fall back on his commitment to clean up the party.
Starmer himself acknowledged on Monday that Abbott herself had suffered significant racial abuse over the years, but added: “That doesn’t take away from the fact that I condemn the words she used and we must never accept the argument that there’s some sort of hierarchy of racism.” Other Labour insiders believe that Starmer would not have chosen to make an example of Abbott in his “zero-tolerance approach” to antisemitism and block her from standing at the next election because of her long record on anti-racism. But they understand that he may not have a choice, and local party officials could be left with no other option but to find another candidate to fight Abbott’s safe seat of Hackney North and Stoke Newington. One Starmer ally said: “If the party is standing by its word on no complacency of winning the next election and is determined to be ruthless, they may not conclude the investigation until the next election to soften the blow, but also highlight they understand the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism that the party took on.” Some of Abbott’s friends question whether another Labour MP, who had not been so closely associated with the Corbyn years, or had been more publicly supportive of Starmer since, would receive the same zero tolerance treatment. They cite shadow justice secretary Steve Reed, a close Starmer ally, who did not have the whip withdrawn after he posted a tweet describing a Jewish Conservative donor as a “puppet master”. He apologised a day after deleting the post. Abbott’s fate will now be decided by party officials. But it will not be lost on Starmer that the party’s handling of the row will be a key test of not just whether Labour can balance tackling antisemitism in its ranks but also show that its complaints system is even-handed.