Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott yesterday ruled out serving in the Shadow Cabinet of the next Labour leader.
She told Sky’s Sophy Ridge: ‘There’s an awful lot to do on the back benches.’
It will come as a huge relief to Sir Keir Starmer, the current front runner in the party leadership race, that Abbott is resigned to life out of the spotlight.
My sources tell me that, as leader, he would have sacked her, no question.
Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott yesterday ruled out serving in the Shadow Cabinet of the next Labour leader
With more time on her hands, perhaps Abbott might now show more interest in her charity, the Diane Abbott Foundation, which focuses on advancing the cause of young black Britons in education and business.
In the three years up until 2016, she spent nearly £55,000 on lavish awards ceremonies at Westminster. Her sponsors included City law firm Linklaters and the Prudential.
What happened after that is a bit of a mystery. The ‘Events’ section on the charity’s website doesn’t appear to have been updated since June 2019; while on the home page there’s a video link to a 2014 awards ceremony.
It will come as a huge relief to Sir Keir Starmer, the current front runner in the party leadership race, that Abbott is resigned to life out of the spotlight, writes Andrew Pierce
Abbott has just filed the papers at Companies House for the year ending 2018 — and it does not make for pretty reading.
There were no donations, no sponsors and no awards ceremony that year. The charity reportedly lost £866 and was kept afloat by one of its directors.
‘Abacus’ Abbott — who has failed to return my calls on this subject — never was very good with numbers, was she?
Sacked Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith concedes politics has taken a toll on his barnet.
‘I need to get the number of a good trichologist who can put back all the hairs I’ve pulled out in the past three years,’ he sighs.
He should pass on any contact details to Boris, whose own thatch, I note, is showing alarming signs of thinning.
Why MP Rosena’s on song
Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan pledges: ‘If I become Deputy Leader, I’ll host a karaoke night at Labour conference.’
According to Tom Hamilton, adviser to former deputy leader Tom Watson, it’s the ‘first deliverable pledge I’ve seen in the entire deputy leadership election’.
Which surely tells us all we need to know about the quality of the candidates.
Labour MP Rosena Allin-Khan pledges: ‘If I become Deputy Leader, I’ll host a karaoke night at Labour conference’
Shadow Culture Secretary Tracy Brabin, she of that off-the-shoulder dress, was once best known as Tricia Armstrong in Coronation Street.
But her range is broad, and she’s also played posh — not least as the Duchess of York in 1992 U.S. TV turkey Charles And Diana: Unhappy Ever After.
The critics panned it but gave her a special mention: ‘Tracy Brabin as Sarah Ferguson is an over-the-top party girl in this gloriously trashy endeavour.’
It’s a wonder Tracy wasn’t hired to star as Fergie in the new series of Channel 4’s royal spoof The Windsors, which starts tomorrow.
Downing Street is gearing up for a third ‘People’s Prime Minister’s Question Time’ with Boris on No 10’s Facebook page.
The last one lasted precisely 19 minutes after Boris declared there were no further questions to answer.
In fact, there were 4,624 more in the queue…
It came out only three weeks ago, but ex-Speaker John Bercow’s memoir, Unspeakable, has slumped to No. 3,565 on Kindle’s best-seller list despite aggressive publicity by the diminuitive one. Shame!
At last, a brilliant HS2 idea!
Robert Goodwill, the Tory MP for Scarborough and Whitby, has come up with a good wheeze for the high-speed rail link.
‘HS2 will connect with the Elizabeth Line and Heathrow at Old Oak Common station — a station that will become every bit as famous as Victoria or Waterloo,’ he says. ‘But Old Oak Common will be neither old nor common, so it should have a name that is iconic and in keeping with its importance — maybe after our first woman Prime Minister?’
So, it is entirely appropriate that Margaret Thatcher — the Iron Lady — should have her name attached to a project set to consume two million tons of steel.