Diane Abbott: Starmer treated me like ‘non-person’ during row over Tory donor’s comments
17 September 2024, 08:04
Diane Abbott has accused Sir Keir Starmer of treating her as a "non-person" during a row over comments made about her by a leading Tory donor.
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The Guardian reported that Frank Hester said in 2019: "It's like trying not to be racist but you see Diane Abbott on the TV, and you're just like I hate, you just want to hate all black women because she's there, and I don't hate all black women at all, but I think she should be shot."
Ms Abbott has now said that she believes she was not properly supported by Sir Keir and he treated her as a “non-person.”
She said: “I think initially I was treated as a non-person, which felt very strange because at the same time they were writing to party members trying to raise money on the back of how Hester had treated me without mentioning me, which was a bit odd.
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“Well, you’d feel that if somebody was threatening to have you shot, you would have felt that your party would have offered you more support, given you advice on safety and security, even kind of commiserated with you. And none of that happened.”
Ms Abbott said: “As I recall, Keir Starmer treated me as a non-person, and I got more support from the leader of the SNP, Stephen Flynn, than I got from the leader of my own party.”
On Sunday, Conservative leadership candidate James Cleverly declined to rule out accepting future donations from Mr Hester.
The shadow home secretary is joint third out of the four candidates still vying to become Tory leader.
Mr Cleverly said: "He's apologised, he admitted that what he said was completely wrong - the reason he donated to the Conservative Party's general election campaign was to protect the British people from the Labour Government that we now see.
"I've not had any discussions with Frank Hester about the future. What he said was totally unacceptable, he's apologised for that - he has been a donor to the (Conservative) party, whether he is again in the future I don't know."
