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UPDATE June 9: After the withdrawal of John Mc Donnell, Diane Abbott secured the 33 nominations needed to secure a spot on the ballot in the leadership elections this fall. News reports and blog reactions here:
- BBC News profile of Diane Abbott
- BBC: Labor's relief as Diane Abbott joins leadership ballot
- Paul Richards, The Guardian: The real danger is Diane Abbott might actually win
- Mary Riddell, Telegraph: Diane Abbott will be an antidote to dog-whistle politics
(Original post)
In the wake of their defeat in Parliamentary elections a few weeks ago, Britain's Labour Party is in the position of having to choose a new leader. The field of candidates includes five male MPs who played prominent roles in the leadership of the Party and the giovernment under outgoing Prime Minister Gordon Brown, and one woman -- Diane Abbott of the Hackney North - Stoke Newington section of London.
Each candidate has to get the nominations of 33 fellow MPs by June 9 to be formally put on the leadership ballot. Under Britain's parliamentary system, should Labour win the next round of parliamentary elections in 2015, the party leader could become the new prime minister. As of this writing, that's a very unlikely prospect: She has only seven nominations, including herself. Three of her opponents: brothers David and Ed Milliband, and Ed Balls are already on the ballot with more than the required nominations. Despite that, Abbott's candidacy raises questions that Labour will have to address as it seeks to redefine itself under the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government.
An outspoken left-wing back-bencher who made history in 1987 as the first black female MP, Abbott argues that she would bring needed attention to issues that affect working class Britons, ethnic minorities and women that aren't currently being highlighted. In a statement on her website, Abbott contended:
I am not just another man in a suit. There’s not a lot of difference between the candidates so far. I am standing because I represent "real choice," not a return to the Blair/Brown politics of the past 13 years. I voted against the Iraq war which is the single biggest source of disillusionment with Labour. And I do not believe that we lost the election because of immigration, as some of my rivals seem to be suggesting. I am a truly independent candidate who will create real change out of the ashes of New Labour, and reclaim the true identity of the Labour Party.
I first met Diane Abbott in 1990, when I interviewed her for the now-defunct Emerge magazine. (The interview is not online.) I saw then many of the traits that British voters know well. As conservative MP Daniel Hannan put it in a June 6 column in the UK Telegraph:
Diane is everything that an MP ought to be: independent, straight-talking, a Whips’ nightmare, a lioness in defence of her constituents’ interests. [Unfortunately, Hannan felt compelled to add the sexist observation that she is also "delightfully coquettish," whatever that means.]
At the time of our conversation 20 years ago, Abbott had recently been in meetings about the need for debt relief Poland and other former Soviet states. She said she'd asked why Poland should get preferential treatment and said she was told, "because the Poles are very, very poor." Her tart reply was that
