Labour ‘could do more’ to challenge anti-immigration messages, Diane Abbott tells Robert Philpot and Adam Harrison
Labour is failing to do enough to challenge the anti-immigration narrative being promoted by the Tories and much of the media, senior Labour frontbencher Diane Abbott has warned.
In a wide-ranging interview with Progress, the former Labour leadership contender also demands David Cameron sack his controversial campaign consultant, Lynton Crosby, accusing him of exercising ‘a very toxic influence’ on the run-up to the general election campaign, and hints that she is considering a run for London mayor in 2016.
Abbott has repeatedly voiced her disquiet over recent months as Labour has hardened its stance on immigration, suggesting in April that ‘all parties need to be careful of “dog whistle” politics on immigration’ and cautioning about a ‘downward spiral’ in the debate.
Now the shadow public health minister argues that Labour ‘could do more’ to challenge the anti-immigration message which dominates the media and political discourse. ‘I’ve spoken to Ed Miliband about this quite a bit,’ Abbott says. ‘I know that, on this issue, Ed’s heart is in the right place and he’s trying hard to position us correctly.’ She suggests, however, that ‘what weighs with him is the polling which shows what the Tories are doing on immigration is popular and it certainly weighs on other members of the shadow cabinet’.
Abbott believes that the party’s response is, in part, being shaped by a lack of voices at a senior level making the case for immigration: ‘Not that many members of the shadow cabinet represent a diverse London constituency and views about race and immigration are different once you step outside London if you think about it. So I think Ed himself means well and is doing his best but as a party we should do [more] because, it’s what I said, it’s a downward spiral.’
The shadow public health minister pledges to use her brief over the coming months to counter the Tories’ anti-immigration agenda. She dismisses the government’s plans to charge illegal immigrants for healthcare, arguing that ‘the mechanisms already exist to charge people who are not entitled to free healthcare’, and suggesting that ‘doctors themselves do not want to be immigration officers’. Abbott steps up her attack on the government’s plans, warning that ‘there is a public health issue about checking people’s passports before they can see the GP’ which, she believes, will discourage even those people who are in the UK perfectly legally from seeing a doctor. ‘That is a problem for a lot of public health conditions, like TB,’ she suggests.
Abbott goes on to attack the blue Labour agenda of ‘faith, flag and family’ and sharply criticises one of its leading proponents, Maurice Glasman. ‘I think the trouble with the blue Labour rhetoric is that it talks about, by implication, a golden age of Labourism that I can’t relate to,’ she says. ‘When Maurice Glasman is going on about how wonderful those white working-class communities of yesteryear were, he doesn’t stop to think what it was like to be a woman in those white working-class communities, he doesn’t stop to think what it was like to be a black person.’
Abbott also turns her fire on the Tories’ political consultant, linking Crosby directly to the government’s more populist stance on immigration: ‘I think you’ve seen the political effects of Lynton Crosby, not just with the public health issues … but with this van they have driving around with posters saying “go home” … I think he’s going to be a very toxic influence on the type of general election campaign we’re going to have and I think Cameron should sack him.’ Crosby reportedly opposed the Home Office’s controversial poster campaign, which advises illegal immigrants to ‘go home or face arrest’. Of the campaign, Britain’s first black female MP says: ‘Can you imagine a van driving around saying “If you’re illegal, go home”, it’s like having “Paki, go home” on a wall.’
Abbott issues a direct challenge to the Tories’ denial that Crosby played any part in the government’s U-turn on plain packaging of cigarettes: ‘For some months, almost every health minister … [was] saying they are in favour of plain packs,’ she says. ‘Then suddenly poor Anna Soubry is dragged to the despatch box to say they’re going to “wait and see” what happens in Australia and it seems to me the only thing that changed between when she was saying she was in favour of plain packs and her saying they were going to wait and see was Lynton Crosby coming on board as [the Tories’] political adviser.’
Abbott believes both business and politics taint the government’s decision, saying she believes ‘Lynton Crosby said to them, “it’s a barnacle on the bottom, it’s not worth the aggravation, you don’t want to have Nigel Farage going around saying he’s the man for a pint and a fag”. So it’s partly a business thing but it’s partly that kind of low level of Lynton Crosby politics,’ she argues.
While careful to suggest that she is ‘enjoying the job I have and I obviously would want to be a public health minister in an Ed Miliband government’, Abbott does little to dampen speculation that she may stand for Labour’s London mayoral nomination. ‘I wouldn’t rule it out,’ she says before outlining the campaign and messages that she believes the party will need to recapture City Hall in 2016: an attack on austerity and a defence of diversity. With many of the capital’s workers employed by the public sector and the full impact of cuts yet to hit, ‘the political consequences of austerity’ will be key in the election, she argues. The London electorate, she continues, is also ‘much more interested in [and] much more positive about diversity and multiculturalism’. Voters will want a mayor who will ‘stand up for those issues’. And she drops a strong hint that she has the qualities the capital’s voters will be looking for: ‘Londoners don’t want a party hack. Big cities never want a party hack … They want someone who’s independent, [who] will stand up for them.’
Abbott, who has represented Hackney since 1987 and was a Westminster councillor prior to that, reveals that she was not consulted about Miliband’s plan to introduce a primary to select the party’s mayoral candidate and expresses scepticism about it. ‘I’m not sure many people were consulted on it,’ she says. ‘I think it needs a lot of thought and I understand the reservations a lot of people have about the primary system.’ Abbott is also unconvinced about the use of primaries in some parliamentary selections, which the Labour leader has said he wants to see: ‘I can see the attractions but you’ve got to look at it from the point of view of the party … Can they be talking about building a mass party but, on the other hand, [be] stripping out all the powers and responsibilities that Labour party members have had,’ she suggests. ‘It doesn’t make any sense, why would you join? Are you going to join so you can give the leader a standing ovation every year at conference? You’re not going to do that.’
Despite her scepticism about primaries, Abbott indicates an openness to reform of the electoral college which elects Labour’s leader, believing that it is ‘inevitable’ given Miliband’s plans to reshape the union link. Recalling her bid three years ago for the leadership, she says: ‘If the vote for leader had been one person, one vote, I’d have been third. One of the things that affected my vote was the fact that, for instance, MPs have a vote which is worth something like 28 times an ordinary member’s vote. So obviously I think you should look at the composition of the electoral college.’
While Abbott’s campaign for the Labour leadership ended in defeat, it opened the way to her appointment to the frontbench and underlined an apparent transformation in her political persona, captured by the Times’ description of her as a ‘leftwing firebrand turned serene television pundit’. So what changed? ‘I haven’t changed, it’s the media’s perception,’ she responds. ‘I stand for exactly the same things I stood for when I was elected.’ Nonetheless, she agrees that six years of joshing with Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo on the This Week sofa has played its part: ‘I was often presented in the media as this mad loony, but … This Week changed perceptions of me. But if you know me, I’ve always been the same person. I was never mad or loony.’
Beyond political punditry, Abbott has tried her hand on University Challenge, the quiz show Pointless, and Come Dine With Me. She views these as an opportunity to ‘communicate with a wider audience about the things I believe’ and a chance to show the public ‘you’re not just another politician, but someone you might have in [the] living room’. Nonetheless, there is a line she will not cross: ‘I’d never go on any of those ghastly reality shows, you know Strictly and all that,’ she laughs.
Abbott acknowledges that the path from ‘leftwing firebrand’ to media darling is a well-trodden one, recalling Tony Benn’s warning that ‘when the media embrace you as national treasure, you know you’re no longer being effective.’ And it is a danger she fully intends to guard against: ‘The day they really think I’m a national treasure, it’s time to pack up and go home, isn’t it?’
—————————————————————————–
“Of the campaign, Britain’s first black female MP says: ‘Can you imagine a van driving around saying “If you’re illegal, go home”, it’s like having “Paki, go home” on a wall.’”
No it’s not. Regardless of the merits (or lack) of this campaign, it’s completely different to the example. If you’re in the country illegally then being told to go home by the Government is entirely rational…not to mention expected. If you’re a Pakistani or Asian UK resident or legal visitor and you see offensive graffiti on a wall it’s doubtless upsetting and has no legal or moral basis. Diane is a master at emotive tripe.
One of the problems with the government’s “Go Home” van is that it is actually not an effective way of dealing with overstayers and illegal immigration. One of the underlying issues in relation to people here as overstayers is the inefficiency of UKBA, in particular the huge backlog. The government should be putting resources into UKBA, if it was serious about the issue. Furthermore there needs to be a crackdown on employers who actually use illegal labour. These would be practical steps. The van is offensive to the communities it drives around and it is more about signalling to potential UKIP voters that the government is “doing something” about immigrants than anything else.
The Racist Van is touring areas with large South Asian populations while offering translation facilities in South Asian languages only. Yet the biggest overstayers are Australians, New Zealanders, and white South Africans.
Immigration by those last, Afrikaners as well as English-speakers, is a huge unreported story, not necessarily as a bad thing, but simply as a fact; London even has a congregation of the Afrikaanse Protestantse Kerk, which seceded from the Dutch Reformed Church due to “compromise” over theological support for apartheid, and having that congregation in London is a very bad thing indeed.
“Reverse colonisation” by the likes of Mark Carney, Lynton Crosby and the largely South African England cricket team is supposed to be mildly amusing, and more than mildly reassuring.
But the methods of Crosby, in particular, are confronting us with the stark reality that each of the members of the old “white Commonwealth” is a very different country from Britain, and has been for an immensely long time, certainly since well before the War.
Canada, Australia and New Zealand each retains the monarchy for the same reason that each of several West Indian and Pacific Island nations does so: because it suits her, not because it suits Britain. How does it affect Britain? It does not.
Independent countries with the Union Flag on their own retain it for their own reasons, not for ours, since we have none for their doing so; after all, even the Boers’ revenge republic managed that, although the purported reconstitution of Rhodesia as a republic did not.
Although there was never free trade even within the British Empire or Commonwealth, it is true that Australia (which has a long and living tradition of protectionism) did experience certain hardships after Britain acceded to the European Communities, as did New Zealand.
But that was in the faraway 1970s, and it is fanciful to suppose, as some people do, that they have been waiting for us ever since, like old maids still waiting for their sweethearts to come home from the First World War. Australia, like Canada, is in the G20, and Canada is in the G8. They stopped needing us a long, long time ago.
The Crosby-isation of the Conservative Party manifests just how foreign each of the Old Dominions is. If you do not believe me, then look at that van. Rightly denounced as un-British by UKIP, it is wholly in keeping with what has always been the political culture of Australia, all the way back to the Colonial period, which no one now alive can remember.
“Reverse colonisation” – economic, social, cultural, political, or in any of those cases demographic – is no more to be welcomed than any other surrender of national and parliamentary sovereignty, whether to the Executive or to the Judiciary, to the European Union or to the United States, to Israel or to the Gulf monarchs, to China or to the Russian oligarchs, to the money markets or to the media moguls, to separatists or to communalists.
Just listen to what the British people want. Who the hell do you think you are to enforce your own agenda on the public? If we want immigration slashed then we want it slashed. End of discussion. It is called democracy. Are you even aware that there is a Britain outside the M25?
I am not forcing my own agenda on anyone. I am just pointing out that the “go home” van is not a practical way to do anything about overstayers and illegal immigrants. Which is presumably what you want?
Yes you are, we all know your ideology, we had to put up with you for 13 years. The British public were not born yesterday. My friend who has just left school (he is 18) has applied for 100s of jobs, yet our local warehouse is full of polish workers. He never even gets a reply. That is nothing to do with the recession, and everything down to your disgusting policies when New Labour was in power.
The “go home” van is not going to get your friend a job. The “go home” van is a gimmick.
Hi Diane. I really like you and a lot of what you have to say, but on race and immigration, I differ. Labour while in government transformed this country forever through immigration without ever asking anyone about it. It’s had positive effects, but also negative effects. I really think we need to put a brake on it, and let recent immigrants settle in to the society. We know from previous waves that it takes time.
As for Labour itself, I joined after the election in 2010 and one of the first meetings I went to I was told, “We should be in favour of immigration because immigrants vote Labour.” This came from a lovely, wonderful person. But it staggered me – the message was we should care more about people who don’t live here than people who do.
Democracy is about the people who are here – whoever they are – being represented. In my view, we should seek to eliminate these boundaries of race, ethnicity and gender (plus sexuality of course) over time in the way we do things – that’s what integration is all about. Respect for everyone should be a given: the corest of core values. Playing identity politics scares the hell out of me in various different ways. Some thoughts in this article linked below:
http://afreeleftblog.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/politics-of-identity-politics-of.html
Much love to you though, whatever our disagreements.
Interesting article. Will have a think!
Thanks Diane, I look forward to your thoughts. My own thoughts have moved on somewhat from that article, specifically about the Labour Party, which I’m seeing now as a bureaucratic nightmare. It’s bewildering the way the central party seeks to control everything in certain ways through fiddly rules – mostly giving favouritism to women. This is our hegemony now. I wish we would embrace that wonderful old idea called democracy, but I’m obviously an old fart.
Spot on. The left always cry racism when it is anything but. Most people never had a problem with immigration until New Labour forced their ideology over us. I have many friends all over europe, I met some wonderful people when I was on holiday in Africa, great people, great continents, but it does not mean we want open borders considering the size of England! The fact is human nature prevails every time, if we feel threatened and our leaders ignore our concerns, it ends up with people relying on their instincts in the end, and it aint pretty. Resentment will lead to trouble, people will be accused if being racist when quite frankly they are just people willing to do or say anything to get themselves heard. Democracy clearly is not working.
Dearie me – trying to paint the Tory’s backroom bloke as Satan – this butters no voter parsnips. Labour needs to get a grip of their own internal wrangling and frankly Ms Abbott tries make everything about race. If she was a member of UKIP she’d be calling herself very rude names for trying to play the race card.
She’s worse than Phil Woolas who ‘wanted to make white folks angry’ and was banned from public office for it.
Whether you agree or disagree with her on various issues, she is an interesting and engaging person. Not sure the mayoral elections will be fought and won on anti-austerity, but a defence and celebration of London’s diversity sounds good.
Also, it’s good to hear voices from different parts of the Labour party on Progress- very, very important.
I loved her flooring of Michael Gove. Abbott held those views when Margaret Thatcher did not. Which is to say, at any point throughout the long career of the latter. Where on earth do people get the idea that “the Left” was somehow in power when all the educational changes of which they rightly disapprove were enacted and implemented? What, in 1988?
Abbott’s ordinary, rather than her Leadership Campaign, website made and makes clear her sympathy for the 11-plus, for single-sex schools, for Oxbridge as academically elitist, for universities’ flexible approach to entry grades if they see potential in the applicant, for the prevention of social rather than academic elitism by improving the schools attended by the poor, for raising poor pupils’ aspirations so
that they actually apply to the top universities, and for reinstating full grants so that they can afford to go.
Admittedly, that sounds a lot more like Old Labour in the North East than Old Labour in London. But it certainly sounds like Old Labour. And not remotely like the Tories, for anyone who bothers to check their record.
Before anyone tries to stock anti-Abbott line (and I do not deny that she has her faults), it is no more or less “hypocritical” for a politician of any party to send his or her child to a commercial school than it is for a politician of any other party to do so. At least Labour politicians ever use the schools for which they legislate, unlike most Lib Dems or practically all Conservatives.
As Harold Wilson made manifest while both Prime Minister and a parent, there has never been any Labour Party policy to abolish these strange institutions, which sell themselves as especially adept at putting pupils through an examination system which is largely rubbish anyway, and which frequently embody the views that adolescence ought to be lived out in single-sex residential environments while the relationship between parents and children ought to be strictly financial and nothing more.
Meaning that Diane Abbott was no more or less a hypocrite than any Conservative or Liberal Democrat, including Nick Clegg. She certainly acquitted herself better than Tony Blair or Harriet Harman, who did in fact send their children to schools that it was then, although mysteriously not for very much longer, the Labour Party policy to abolish.
Abbots mistaken ,about the white working class male community of the 50’s, I’m sorry if her mother did suffer racism and sexism ,buts its Abbotts own prejudice that she considers all white working class people form that era to be racist, and then comes out with her own prejudices that are directed a the white working class male now who suffer ,more becuase of the large minority that made her own mothers generations life’s hell,not only have some of her comments of recent years been mucus guided, or the fact the Tories made so much at the 87 election of her comment all working class white people are racist, that they used it in 1987 general election comment as an attack on Labour, it was her attacks o n white police officers, calling them all racist that drove a crack between the police and the community sashe was suppose to serve, causing. Problems for both black and white people who were trying to build bridges to help everyone in those communities come together after years of hostilities,
I didn’t say that all white working class males in the 1950s were racist. Baffled that you try to put those words into my mouth.
The Tories said you said it in their 1987 election broadcast, it was quite well quoted, I think you should point out to the they. Shouldn’t have said you said it
http://www.politicsresources.net/area/uk/pebs/con87.htm
2nd one down 22nd may
I wouldn’t believe everything the Tories say if I were you.
O.k fair point if you didn’t say it I’m sorry that I believed it but I know for a fact that 99% of those other comments made by various Labour people were said and I recall leafleting for Jo Richardson at the 87 election ,and all we got on the door step was you can’t control the unions, you anti the police ,full of extremists, but my point is that where there were things in the 2005 manifesto that didn’t get implemented like changing the abortion laws in Northern Ireland ,to be the same as England, making corporate manslaughter be viable to the Army in peace time that if inadequate uniforms were supplied to soldiers who died then the MOD would be viable to prosecution as much as any of are if we’re not to do our jobs properly and put staff in danger, or things from the 2010 manifesto like the living wage that could be put in the 2015 manifesto,
My point is having attended a Blue labour meeting that ,yes they do have ideas from the 50’s and drawing from that decade there was a community atmosphere of he working class that wasn’t all prejudice or sexist,and that the meeting was about 50/50 male female and there was approximately third BaME in attendance ,from Mandy Richards who stood for the GLA and is waking to stand in Hornsey, to mr Ammura and Mr lammy,
This general dislike of the white working class is not only evident from individual Labour MPs like Diane Abbott but also large chunks of the Guardian-reading classes.
All this recent hand-wringing over how to get our message across better, ignores the fundamental problem that many of our former supporters suspect that much of the liberal-left doesn’t like them very much, would prefer to talk down to them rather than listen to them and doesn’t really empathise with them or understand their legitimate concerns about issues like immigration (the public’s second most important issue after the economy).
It shouldn’t be surprising that failing to listen to people leads to unpopularity but I suppose we’ll instead continue to hear that tired old narrative about how people are being hoodwinked by the right-wing media.
I agree that some of the Labour’s traditional working class support, both black and white, felt that New Labour sometimes talked down to them. And, inasmuch as anti-immigrant rhetoric is actually about real issues like job insecurity and lack of affordable housing, the Labour Party should be promoting practical policies to deal with the real issues.
Sometimes? What about overpopulation? Are you aware England has a countryside?
Yes some of it is about job insecurity – but if you allow 700,000 workers into the country from Eastern Europe, what did you expect to happen to the labour market?
And yes some of it is about lack of affordable housing – but if you fail to build any social housing while allowing annual immigration in the hundreds of thousands, what did you expect to happen to the availability of affordable housing?
But there is more to it than that. Labour doesn’t want to acknowledge that many people in working class areas feel alienated by the drastic changes to their communities over the last decade. Labour also created the culture where the abuse in the child grooming scandals in Rochdale, Rotherham, Oxford and elsewhere was so disgracefully allowed to continue for years without being properly investigated by the authorities. Action could have been taken but the politics got in the way and some of the most vulnerable children had their lives ruined.
Working-class people are entitled to have their say about these issues when they are adversely affected. Ignore the genuinely racist elements and address the legitimate concerns that people have in a sensible way. If Labour did this in a credible way it would do much more to take the initiative away from the far-right than just constantly playing the race card which is all we seem to do these days.
Ms Abbott is one of the reasons why Labour lost the last election and why if Labour keep on as they are they will remain out of Government
Too right. Thanks to people like her not listening to what the public want and carrying on with their own agenda, Labour will never be trusted again.
Take a look over this, then tell em with which bits you disagree, and why – http://davidaslindsay.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/towards-post-liberal-future.html
Diane Abbott has done her bit to drag our great country down to the abyss. What party that puts Britons first is there to vote for? As it stands Millipede is exactly what UKIP needs to make serious inroads into the political landscape. Us working class folk are prepared to go right wing in order to get certain things done, even if we dont agree with everything that it involves, some things really need doing. That does not mean we hate any creed or nationality that is not white British, but it means we are not prepared to see our population surge over 70m, not prepared to see our character as a nation watered to an unrecognisable level, not prepared to see our wonderful English countryside disappear for good and not prepared to see our food security get weaker and weaker as this century progresses, and not prepared to see our sovereignty being passed away like it is going out of fashion. Politicians like Diane Abbott have all the grace and beauty of Brutalist Architecture, and the scar they have left on our towns and cities is pretty similar. I dont like to get nasty and I like most people, but when we see the legacy of what many politicians have done, I cannot help but see them as something other than human. Yes Diane, we are incredibly angry, and we dont have to be in the EDL and agree with their philosophy to be that. At least Ed Miliband is changing his stance on immigration because he knows the general public will not stand for anything less. You will not win in 2015 without having tighter policies in your manifesto. That is a guaranteed fact.
Diane Abbott would wipe the floor with Boris J at any London Mayoral election. LABOUR would lose out on a strong voice at Westminster. Whatever she decides, I wish her well. Being a British National treasures wouldn’t be too bad. I was personally quite sad when you ‘lost’ the leadership ‘race’ and came 3rd to Ed’s 1st overall. Probably rigged. We need more like you, Diane. Sanity and common sense doesn’t grow on trees in Parliament these days [has it ever?] and you are the sanest and most media-savvy one in that ever-changing chatterbox bubble.
Hello Diane,
I note the contents of your article. You raise some very important points. It would appear from your evaluation on diversity that you fail to apologise for New Labours influence and failure to control immigration. New Labour of which you part, championed the Blair Doctrine of Diversity. We are now aware of the consequences of the failure of Diversity.
Lets takes public services. “Diversity and Choice produces excellence in public services” Remember this phrase coined by Blair in workforce modernisation reforms of Education and Health. Diversity in this case relates to provider. It is clear that the marketisation of public services by private, public, voluntary, charity, community. independent means created inequality, fragmentation and competition.. Choice: Hospitals choosing patients and schools choosing students and parents. Thats the result of Diversity. Empowerment of the provider not empowerment of the citizen.
You are right to suggest that immigration has its benefits but only if it is controlled in a sensible way. Again something that New Labour, of which you were part failed to do. You fail to recognise the real impact of immigration on hard working taxpayers. You fail to recognise the real impact immigration has on our public services. Unless you have been living in ignorance for the last three years the party with the most robust immigration policy will have the keys to number 10. I think your article is poorly timed, out of touch with the mainstream in society,and totally at odds with the thoughts of the majority of labour supporters and members…and the country.
You appear at times to wallow in quagmire of political depravity. I share the calls for a complete shake up of the Labour Party from top to bottom. I support the calls for Ed to reinforce his authority by sacking three quarters of his shadow cabinet. The ghost of New Labour must be released. It was a good act in part but it is time to clear the stage. It will be very popular with voters. Strong, Bold and Courageous. He has no choice but to wield the axe. I am sorry to say Diane, that includes you.
I could quite easily rip your article to pieces due to many inconsistencies. I will say one thing to you, in your defence, you have the courage and the decency to interact with contributors.
The future of Labour and its direction lies with those who have not yet rose from the ashes. But will in due course.
Nothing reassures me of Abbott’s unprincipled self interest more than this. There are two kinds of people in this world, those who pull others up and those who push them down. Labour’s recent noises on immigration are frankly hollow but could have started to gain traction with people who have recently voted for us in UKIP. Abbott’s rallying of the left this is not, it is a pitch at running for the Mayor of London job by appealing to what she feels are easy votes in that city. That this throws sand in the wheels of the party machine at large matters not one bit to her and I think that is a sad example of the lack of a real will to win by any means, other than not being the Tories, within Labour.
I shouldn’t complain though, this is a great seed of discourse Abbott has sown and will do UKIP no harm at all, pity those in Progress and the Cooperative Party who were actually trying to keep the party electable. We in UKIP LOVE the radical left just for moments like this
Astonishingly, Diane Abbott seems to believe that there’s some kind of moral component to immigration.
There isn’t, of course.
It’s simply about money.