No decision taken on barring Diane Abbott from selection as Labour candidate, says Keir Starmer – UK politics live
Starmer: ‘no decision’ taken to bar ‘trailblazer’ Diane Abbott
Labour leader Keir Starmer has again told broadcasters that no decision has been taken over the selection of Diane Abbott as a candidate, and denied that left-wing candidates were being blocked by the party.
Denying claims that a purge was taking place, Starmer said “No. I’ve said repeatedly over the last two years as we’ve selected our candidates that I want the highest-quality candidates. That’s been the position for a very long time.”
Speaking to broadcasters in Monmouthshire, PA Media report he said:
The situation in relation to Diane Abbott is that no decision has been taken to bar her and you have to remember that she was a trailblazer as an MP, she overcame incredible challenges to achieve what she achieved in her political career.
She carved out a path for others to come into politics and she did all that while also being one of the most abused MPs across all political parties.
But I’ve always had the aspiration that we will have the best quality candidates as we go into this election.
Key events
Blocked Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen to challenge deselection
Faiza Shaheen, the candidate blocked by Labour from standing in Chingford and Woodford Green, has announced she will challenge the decision in the courts, claiming she has faced “a systematic campaign of racism, Islamophobia and bullying”.
Citing a series of recent issues, including having a local organiser removed from her team and being blocked from producing videos blaming inflation on “corporate greed,” Shaheen claimed Keir Starmer’s party had “a problem with black and brown people”.
“This campaign of prejudice, bullying and spiteful behaviour has finally been rewarded by Labour’s NEC [national executive committee] and my name has been added to the list of those not welcome in the candidate club. And it is no surprise that many of those excluded are people of colour,” she said in a statement.
“I have come to the inescapable conclusion that Labour, far from being a broad church encompassing different views, has an ingrained culture of bullying, a palpable problem with black and brown people, and thinks nothing of dragging a person’s good name through the mud in pursuit of a factional agenda, with no thought of the impact on committed members’ mental health and wellbeing.”
Shaheen’s campaign team said she had instructed a lawyer, and was seeking to challenge her exclusion on Wednesday by a panel of Labour’s ruling NEC.
Read more here: Blocked Labour candidate Faiza Shaheen to challenge deselection
Here is today’s now obligatory picture of Ed Davey doing something silly to ensure that his photograph gets into election coverage. He is in Frome, Somerset, and has gone down a massive water slide.
He has actually defended the stunts today, saying “I think my belief is that politicians need to take the concerns and interests of voters seriously but I’m not sure they need to take themselves seriously all the time, and I’m quite happy to have some fun.”
Speaking to the media he said that, like Labour and the Conservatives also promised today, the Liberal Democrats ruled out raising income tax, national insurance or VAT to pay for their plans.
The policy the party were pushing today was a plan to triple the Digital Services Tax and use the money to fund mental health professionals for all England’s state schools.
The Digital Services Tax was introduced in 2020 and levies a 2% charge on the revenues of search engines, social media services and online marketplaces which derive value from UK users.
The picture opportunities may well provide a way of Davey making sure his party get greater coverage during the election, but it does potentially pose him a problem how, after a month of silly photoshoots, he expects to settle back down to being a serious figure who is due to appear before the Post Office Horizon IT inquiry on Thursday 18 July, just two weeks after the election. Other former Liberal Democrat ministers Jo Swinson and Vince Cable are also due to appear before the inquiry in July.
Scotland’s first minister has apologised to patients on NHS waiting lists in the country after news the number has risen to more than 840,000.
PA Media reports statistics from Public Health Scotland this week showed the number of people waiting for treatment or tests has increased.
John Swinney said he is the “first to acknowledge we face challenges in the National Health Service” after the pandemic.
“I’m sorry for the amount of time people are having to wait for treatment,” he said. “We are reducing the longest waits, we’re making headway on that.”
Angela Rayner has told Sky News she felt her “wings had been clipped” by the police investigation into the sale of her former council house and that it caused a “distraction” from Labour’s election campaign.
She that the investigation had been “shaming” and that “as a working class person it taints you”.
On 19 May the chief constable of the police force examining the claims, Stephen Watson, told the Guardian it was a letter from the Conservative deputy chair, James Daly, that led to his force reversing an initial decision not to investigate.
PA Media reports Rayner told the broadcaster:
I had my house that I got when I was a single mum and it mattered to me. It was a big deal. I never felt secure when I was a child. I never felt safe. So for me to be in a position to provide for my son and to get the house, it was a massive deal.
She said she regretted the public scrutiny the row had put her family under, and that it was a waste of police time. “It was horrible,” she said. “I feel a sense of regret that I put my family through this. But they also know that I’m trying to do some good.”
Severin Carrell is the Guardian’s Scotland editor
The Scottish National party has deleted an election video on TikTok after it emerged it featured a sexually-explicit song by American rap artist Big Boss Vette, which also uses the n-word.
The track, Pretty Girls Walk, carries an explicit lyrics warning on streaming platforms and starts with the verse: “No matter what the fuck these hoes talkin’ ‘bout, just know you a bad bitch, every motherfucking time that you wake up, and you look in that motherfucking mirror”.
The SNP video reportedly promoted party policies calling for a full ceasefire in Gaza and its baby-boxes policy, free bus travel and featured party leader John Swinney.
The breakaway nationalist party Alba, set up by former party leader and first minister Alex Salmond, complained the video also featured the n-word.
Tony Osy, Alba’s candidate in Glasgow South West and a member of its African Scots for Alba caucus, said: “The stigma of that word embodies and invokes painful memories and inhumane ill-will.
“We must not condone, award, or engage in political messaging that uses the n-word in any capacity, or in any artistic endeavour that does not allude to the historical context of the word, or that does not highlight the prejudicial nature of the word.
“Political parties that do not understand the deeply hurtful and dehumanising use of that racist word should not be using it in clickbait political adverts.”
There have been a few campaign launch events today. Here are some pictures from them.
Diane Abbott should be allowed to stand for Labour, says Angela Rayner
Diane Abbott has not been treated “fairly or appropriately” by some Labour colleagues and should be allowed to stand again for the party at the election if she wishes to do so, Angela Rayner has said.
Labour’s deputy leader confirmed the veteran MP had not been barred from running again despite reports to the contrary and that she “doesn’t see any reason” why she could not do so now the party whip had been restored.
In an interview with the Guardian, she also suggested it was up to Abbott to decide whether she retired at this election, although she indicated there was an expectation she would do so. “I want to see her be able to retire with her 37 years of service being respected and being celebrated,” she said.
Read more here: Diane Abbott should be allowed to stand for Labour, says Angela Rayner
The campaign has been quite quiet today from senior Conservatives after Jeremy Hunt’s appearances on the morning media round. We are expecting Rishi Sunak to appear at an event in south-east England later this afternoon, but in the meantime they have been driving a van around Westminster carrying a new poster with the message “If you think Labour will win, start saving”. The small print on the poster threatens that Labour’s policy promises will “cost working families £2,094”.
Faiza Shaheen has attacked Labour leader Keir Starmer directly on social media, accusing him of undermining her credentials and saying “Haven’t you hurt me enough already?”
In a message posted to social media she wrote “Please don’t undermine my credentials Keir Starmer. I came from a family with a violent father and spent part of my childhood on benefits. I’m now a visiting professor and teach at LSE. Public services really helped me, and I had to work so hard to get to this point in my life.”
She added “Haven’t you hurt me enough already?”.
In an earlier post Shaheen, who reduced Iain Duncan-Smith’s majority in his constituency to just over 1,200 at the last election, said “I’m in such shock, but I’m a fighter,” adding in a statement:
At 9pm last night, by email, I learned that Labour has removed me as its candidate for Chingford and Woodford Green, less than six weeks before the general election after working to win this seat for over four years.
I want to thank everyone that has been in touch lending their support. I feel that a huge injustice has been done, not just to me, but to our community.
As you can imagine, I’m a little overwhelmed right now, so will use this morning to meet with my campaign and legal teams to discuss my next steps, as well as have some hugs with my baby. This is not the end of my story and I will be releasing all the detail of what has happened to me publicly very soon.
Shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper has been speaking to the media while campaigning in Maltby, South Yorkshire, and was asked about the situation with Diane Abbott, whose selection to defend her Hackney North and Stoke Newington appears up in the air.
PA media report Cooper told assembled reporters that “Diane is now back a member of the parliamentary Labour party, and that is really welcome.”
She continued:
It’s not just that she’s been a trailblazer, but she’s also done some immensely important work through the years. So that’s why I think everybody wants to see this resolved as quickly as possible.
Diane is a really important figure in the Labour party and in the Labour movement. And, I saw the immensely important work that she did, for example, exploding the Windrush Scandal and getting justice for huge numbers of people who were really badly treated by the Home Office, and that’s really important.
A vigil last month marked six years since the Windrush scandal emerged, with victims and campaigners still appealing for the Conservative government to speed up the payment of compensation.
Asked whether Labour leader Keir Starmer was forcing the left out of the party, Cooper said:
I think we’ve got people from all different perspectives within the Labour party standing behind a Labour plan for government, and that means getting more neighbourhood police back on the beat, it means cutting waiting times in our NHS, it means fixing the broken Britain that the Conservatives have left us with.
And, I think that is something that pulls the entire Labour party together but also means there are a lot of people who haven’t voted Labour before who we hope will be voting Labour this time in order to put and end to the Tories’ chaos and get our country back on track.
Steven Morris reports from Bristol for the Guardian
It also felt like the end of an era for the Greens at the party’s launch in Bristol as Caroline Lucas spoke after she ceased being MP for Brighton Pavilion at midnight.
She said: “I have absolutely loved my time in parliament and it’s been the privilege of my life to have been chosen four times by the wonderful people of Brighton Pavilion.”
Lucas, too, banged the drum for the idea that Green MPs could put pressure on an incoming UK Labour government to be bolder.
She said it was good news that the Tories were heading for defeat but added: “What I think even better news, even better news would be that when a Labour government is formed, that government was pushed to be bolder and braver on everything from housing to the NHS to the accelerating climate crisis and that would happen by having more Green MPs in parliament.”
Steven Morris reports from Bristol for the Guardian
The Green party of England and Wales has promised to push a UK Labour government to be bolder if it wins seats at the general election and taken a swipe at Keir Starmer over his party’s approach to the climate emergency, the NHS and housing.
Launching the campaign in Bristol, the party’s joint leader, Carla Denyer said the party believed it could win four seats, which she said could help push Labour to be more radical.
Denyer told the Guardian that having just a few Green MPs could make all the difference. She said: “We know from the experience of our elected Greens at all levels of government, including our fantastic London assembly members and now over 800 Green party councillors across England and Wales, that even just one or two or a handful of Greens in the room can make all the difference. Greens can ask the questions, no one else is asking, put forward the proposals that nobody else is putting forward.
“We’ve seen the huge impact that just one Green MP in the fantastic Caroline Lucas has had in Westminster. Imagine the impact we could have with four MPs. To pick up the baton from her, carry on her fantastic work.”
The Green launch took place at St George’s, a concert hall converted from a Georgian church close to the party’s Bristol office and to one of street artist Banksy’s most famous works, Well Hung Lover, which depicts a naked man dangling from a window ledge. Earlier this month the Greens celebrated a spectacular win at the council elections in Bristol, winning 34 of the 70 seats and leaving Labour trailing a distant second with 21. It leads the city council.
At the launch event, Denyer said: “People are disappointed by the way Starmer has backtracked on his promises on green investment, his weak offer on housing, and now we have Wes Streeting telling us that more privatisation of the NHS is a good thing.”
She continued: “When the challenges we face are so huge, people tell us they’re disappointed by the lack of ambition from the Labour party. Our politics is broken. Our public services are on their knees and people are worse off now than when the Conservatives came to power 14 years ago. The case for change is obvious, but it has to be real change that offers real hope. Half measures and broken pledges will not do.
“The Conservatives are clearly on their way out of government, but Labour is failing to offer the real change needed. We have the practical solutions to the cost of living crisis, building new affordable homes, protecting our NHS from creeping privatisation and cleaning up our toxic rivers and seas.
“That’s why it’s so important that when Labour form the next government, they are pushed beyond the tiniest change they are offering. They are pushed to be more ambitious, braver, not to skirt around the edges of the massive crisis facing our country, but to actually make real change that benefits people’s lives every day.”
The Greens’ co-leader, Adrian Ramsay, said: “Real change means not cosying up to the fossil fuel lobby and abandoning commitments on climate targets.
“Only by having more Greens in parliament can we be confident that we’ll have the strong voices to stop the backsliding on the urgent climate action that we so desperately need.”
Speaking at a Reform event in London, Nigel Farage has said that the election is already over and that Keir Starmer will be prime minister, but that the Conservatives “will be in opposition. But they won’t be the opposition.”
He said of the Conservatives “They can’t be the opposition. They don’t agree on anything. The party is completely split. It serves no real purpose of any kind at this moment in time. They pretty much all hate each other.”
Farage argued that Reform would win seats, despite the first past the post system, because over the course of the campaign Conservative supporters will realise “that actually the Conservatives can’t win.”
He said that once they realise that, and that “really, they agree with much of what we say, and what we stand for” he said then “they are much freer to vote for us, and it’s on that basis I believe we are going to win seats. Maybe not a huge number, but we are going to win seats. And we intend to be the voice of opposition to a Labour government over the course of the next five years. That’s the aim.”
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