Diane Abbott is still considering her future after being given the backing to stand as a Labour MP, her close friend Shami Chakrabarti has said, amid reports that Labour has offered peerages to MPs in order to stand down.
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, denied such an offer had been made, telling Sky News on Sunday: “It’s not the way the system works. There’s a whole process with the independent committee that will vet nominations. There have to be processes in terms of the numbers of nominations designated by the prime minister and so on.”
But a number of leftwing MPs told the Sunday Times that offers were made for them to give up their seats. Abbott was widely expected by Labour MPs to announce her retirement and be given a peerage, until a Labour source briefed last week that she would be banned from standing and Abbott said she still intended to fight to be a candidate.
After a row that dominated last week’s election cycle, the Labour leader, Keir Starmer, said Abbott was free to stand as a Labour candidate. But Lady Chakrabarti, a former shadow attorney general, said her friend was taking a few days to consider her options before Tuesday’s meeting of the national executive committee to finally rubber stamp all the candidates.
“I hope that she will now [take time to think] after this sometimes sordid week of unauthorised anonymous briefings by overgrown schoolboys in suits with their feet on the table and maybe watching too much West Wing … I hope they remember it’s supposed to be country first, not faction first,” Chakrabarti told BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg.
“I hope she will take some time to consider what she wants to do. And that’s what I’ve suggested to her as a friend and I hope that’s what she’s going to do.”
Chakrabarti said it should “not be decided by fans or detractors of my dear friend, I want her to just decide what she wants to do and take a few days over that”.
Labour has announced a flurry of candidates in safe seats who are close allies of Starmer and have been instrumental in overhauling the party since Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.
They include six members of Labour’s national executive committee, including its chair, James Asser, in West Ham and Beckton, and in North Durham Luke Akehurst, a key organiser in Labour to Win, which organises support to maintain centrist influence in constituencies and in conference votes.
after newsletter promotion
Others who have been key to Starmer’s project have been given candidacies in safe seats, including Josh Simons, the director of Labour Together, the thinktank behind Starmer’s leadership bid, Alex Barros-Curtis, Labour’s head of legal who was key to the expulsion of Corbyn and a number of legal battles with former staff, and the Resolution Foundation’s Torsten Bell in Swansea West.
William Turner is a seasoned U.K. correspondent with a deep understanding of domestic affairs. With a passion for British politics and culture, he provides insightful analysis and comprehensive coverage of events within the United Kingdom.
