Diane Abbott has said she intends to “run and win” for Labour in Hackney North and Stoke Newington, days before a meeting of the party’s executive is expected to rubber-stamp her candidacy.
Keir Starmer said last week that Abbott was “free to stand” as a Labour candidate after regaining the whip after a long suspension. It followed days of speculation that Abbot would be blocked from standing, culminating in her accusing Labour of carrying out a “cull of leftwingers”.
On Sunday evening Abbott also denied a report that she had been offered a seat in the House of Lords if she agreed to stand aside in the constituency she has represented for 37 years.
“I have never been offered a seat in the Lords, and would not accept one if offered. I am the adopted Labour candidate for Hackney North & Stoke Newington. I intend to run and to win as Labour’s candidate,” she posted on X.
The shadow home secretary, Yvette Cooper, had earlier denied reports in the Sunday Times that a string of Labour MPs had been offered peerages to quit and make way for allies of Starmer.
She told 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.”
Cooper said that “no party can do that or make that sort of commitment”, but in practice party leaders and the prime minister do have that power. While nominations are vetted by an independent committee, it is for political parties to decide who receives them. The committee checks if the nominee is a person of good standing but does not have a veto.
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, after which Abbott said she still intended to fight to be a candidate.
She was suspended from the party last year after writing a letter to the Observer saying that Jewish people and Travellers suffered prejudice but not racism, comparing their experiences with those of people with red hair.
Abbott apologised for her remarks but was placed under investigation and lost the Labour whip.
At one stage, the possibility of her standing as an independent had been a real one. She told a rally of supporters last week that she intended to stand in the general election “by any means possible”.
Labour’s ruling national executive committee (NEC) will hold a crucial meeting on Tuesday to decide whether or not to endorse a range of candidates for a number of remaining seats.
The party has already 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.
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They include six members of Labour’s national executive committee, notably 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.
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 election; 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.
However, the row over Abbott has unfolded amid controversies over other left-leaning Labour figures seeking re-election or backing to become a candidate.
Faiza Shaheen, blocked by Labour from standing in Chingford and Woodford Green, has announced she will challenge the decision in the courts, claiming she has faced “a systematic campaign of racism, Islamophobia and bullying”.
Lloyd Russell-Moyle, who had been the MP for Brighton Kemptown since 2017, announced last week he had been suspended from the party and would not be allowed to stand for Labour at the election.
