have you quit the labour party yet?

Met someone from her constutuency who suddenly blurted out she didn't like her when we happened to talk politics. Guess what? White middle class woman! xp

Yes but she is personally not especially well liked, unlike Corbyn.

Luke is probably one of ugliest freaks of the Labour Right, everything about him is grotesque. I think even people who are not fans of Diane will be inclined to agree with this.

I am personally a bit suspicious of some of her antics, and the infantilisation of her as 'auntie' Diane by left twitter, but don't see enough of a problem to just humiliate her like this and bar her. A lot of dislike does come down to racism, and the way she has been treated feeds into that.

But yes she isn't liked and a creep like Luke has the advantage of being unknown.

but he's such a disgusting charisma free, party creature, barely even human and he has a psychopathic dead-eye stare. I can't imagine ppl taking to him.

They won't pick Akehurst, they're not that stupid are they?

oh right, I thought this was a done deal.

I hope not. Haven't seen anything xp

The obvious move would be to pick another black woman.

So funny, Starmer served under Corbyn. These cunts.

Keir Starmer's aides briefing the BBC tonight: "We want dignity for Diane Abbott, she's an icon, but she cannot remain an MP because she mixed up her sums in a 2019 interview" pic.twitter.com/0kW6Z8fG10

— Nicholas Guyatt (@NicholasGuyatt) May 28, 2024

This is what I saw last night.

"Although her fate is officially yet to be decided, three Labour activists with links to Abbott’s constituency – Anntoinette Bramble, the deputy mayor of Hackney council; Sem Moema, the London assembly member for North East; and Mete Coban, a Labour councillor for Stoke Newington – have been widely talked about as possible replacements."

The people calling Diane Abbott ‘auntie’ are mostly black and brown women on the left who do so as a form of respect. Allow it.

Its not for me to allow it. I'll keep thinking its bollocks. Thanks.

Sem Moema dropped out from the Islington North selection with many suggesting friendship with one of the Hackney Council paedo wrong’uns left her vulnerable.

This is getting interesting (and weird).

https://x.com/hackneyabbott/status/1795740459085750561?s=46&t=Xety4ZUudTBKt4dxOZMmDw

Lol

wtf!

Sky said she had told them personally she'd been barred er.....

lol wanker with LBC mic on the high street already. Asked me if I lived round here, I said "not interested in talking, thanks", he groaned.

So could it be that she's decided to retire? Jump before pushed? I can't work out what's going on here.

the Labour leadership presiding over leaks, much confusion, the veritable clusterfuck of the day. You see this.. this is what stability looks like.

Robert Peston tweeted something saying that she'd negotiated a deal with the leadership where she'd retire, the whip would be restored, Starmer and other senior figures would make respectful statements paying tribute to her, but then these briefings appeared in the Times saying that she'd been barred from standing (from Labour right types who couldn't resist the urge to take a victory lap/brag about hammering the left?) But who knows.

guessing the problem will be "media regurgitating quotes from unnamed political sources as if they are facts" again

I also wouldn't be surprised if she said one thing to Starmer, another to Sky and now another on Twitter. Not quite sure how Labour thought this would play out to their advantage.

They forgot she isn’t as ‘nice’ as Jeremy Corbyn. Gwan, Diane!

I'm old enough to remember when ppl said that the guileless simp, Kieth Starmer, that he was forensic and a formidable opponent.

> Just been confirmed that Diane Abbott has been barred from standing.

this tweet though, from 10 this morning, suggests otherwise
https://x.com/HackneyAbbott/status/1795740459085750561

"But I am very dismayed that numerous reports suggest I have been barred as a candidate."

Make em own it Diane

Ok

This clip is being circulated among BAME Labour MPs, I'm told – one, not on left or close to Abbott, says: "Like every other white man he doesn’t get how important Diane is"

Real discontent in PLP. Starmer trying to calm it all down by saying decision hasn't been made yet https://t.co/5eJX9JwpU1

— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) May 29, 2024

Definitely sending out Streeting to do the interviews about this is a great look, kiu Keir

Centrists are so aggressively unlikable pic.twitter.com/TAX2uvSXVP

— ashok kumar 🇵🇸 (@broseph_stalin) May 29, 2024

Ok

🐦[This clip is being circulated among BAME Labour MPs, I’m told – one, not on left or close to Abbott, says: "Like every other white man he doesn’t get how important Diane is"

Real discontent in PLP. Starmer trying to calm it all down by saying decision hasn’t been made yet https://t.co/5eJX9JwpU1🕸
— Sienna Rodgers (@siennamarla) May 29, 2024🕸]🐦

SCOOP: Labour is blocking leftwing Brighton MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle from standing at the general election. https://t.co/h8EENAv2V5

— Rivkah Brown (@rivkahbrown) May 29, 2024

https://x.com/lloyd_rm/status/1795863977961926933?s=46&t=Xety4ZUudTBKt4dxOZMmDw

"he picked up the mace in 2018, and he looked a bit of a prick" is my prediction

xp okay well, could be something else

He’s also under fire from terfs (ugh his replies) for wanting conversion therapy banned.

I was thinking it must have been the ace with the mace incident at first, but that was 6 years ago - apparently russell-melt's historic political crime was from 8 years ago.

Going after Asian, Black and gay MPs, is it?

Jones has said they'll dump Coyle as well, just to show how impartial this purge is

Diane Abbott saying she HAS been banned from standing and she will stand no matter what - including as a independent.

it was a windy journey to get here, but I'm glad she's standing against Labour now

not quite at the point of hoping the tories pull off a surprise victory yet but jfc I am really not looking forward to The Starmer Years

Am I being unreasonable in really disliking Streeting?

no, he has accurately been described as unlikeable upthread

no, he's fucking horrible. He's a 6 foot odd bully with anger management issues, a lickspittle tory cunt and he's going to finish off the NHS. Dislike away to yr heart's content!

whomst among us has not purged our enemies?

Labour history is cyclical - hours before a selection vote in Ilford South in 2019, moderate stalwart Jas Athwal was suspended over last-minute allegations which were similarly unspecified and (in his instance) later found to be groundless.

There will be fury from the left over… https://t.co/EzDz4tmiLd

— Gabriel Pogrund (@Gabriel_Pogrund) May 29, 2024

x-post - Yeah. It's the last part - the fact that he's not saying he thinks the NHS is a thing of wonder - that wearies me.

to him it's a thing of wonder in the sense that all his top donors have private healthcare interests and his biggest one is actually providing pro-privatisation senior management staff to the NHS. It's not creeping privatisation anymore, it's a fucking war of annihilation.

it's weird for the leadership to be starting a row over this now, when the left have been so thoroughly cowed - it's not like a handful of left MPs were ever going to have much impact on a Starmer govt post-election anyway? But certain elements on the Lab right seem pathological about this stuff - e.g. this article about the Labour left from earlier this month which is 90% people on the left saying that they're totally fucked, but also Luke Akehurst warning that they're liable to wrest control of the party back at any moment:

From the leader’s office and the front bench to Labour’s many internal party committees, the flank that so dominated during the Corbyn era has now lost power at every level of the party. Yet Luke Akehurst, the influential secretary of ‘old right’ group Labour First and member of Labour’s national executive committee (NEC), recently warned Starmer supporters that the left has not gone away entirely.

“Whatever happens in the general election, we’re going to have to be ready to have a scrap with these guys again,” Akehurst said. “If, God forbid, we do not get an overall majority, they will not say ‘that’s because your task was really difficult’.

“They’ll say it was our fault – ‘if we’d only kept Jeremy Corbyn or Rebecca Long-Bailey, and had a robust socialist programme nationalising 100 industries’, or whatever, ‘we would have walked it’ – and they’ll come back fighting on that. Or if we win, they’ve already got the narrative going of betrayal and disappointment.”

tossing the ming vase to one side so you can start taking wild swings anyone nearby who looks vaguely left-wing

You'd kind of hope that anyone in the Labour Party wasn't hoping for the Left to go away.