Whenever Diane Abbott speaks, people listen. Not because what she has to say is particularly earth-shattering but because they wonder how on earth this fifth rate politician has somehow climbed the slippery slope to become a shadow cabinet minister. She was at her magnificent best when speaking on behalf of the Labour Party on the government’s hostile Immigration Bill, which place huge restrictions on migration from the EU and stop free movement, including for our own people. Here I give you some of Ms Abbott’s actual words:
“The Labour party is clear that when Britain leaves the single market, freedom of movement ends, and we set this out in our 2017 manifesto. I am a slavish devotee of that magnificent document: so on that basis, the frontbench of the Labour party will not be opposing this bill this evening.”
This is odd because she also said this:
This is “one of the flimsiest pieces of legislation on a major issue that I or many of my colleagues have seen. This bill, the immigration white paper and the accompanying media narrative, plays to some of the very worst aspects of the Brexit debate. In the process, it risks doing irreparable damage to business, the economy and society.”
Blimey. The Labour frontbench, consisting mainly of hard left Corbynistas of varying levels of incompetence, was not going to oppose a hard right Tory immigration bill. Ah – but don’t worry. Abbott then said Labour was going to abstain at this stage and put amendments later. Of course! Why didn’t I think of that before? “It risks doing irreparable damage to business, the economy and society,” so we aren’t going to vote against it.
Lest we forget, Abbott is part of Corbyn’s ‘new kind of politics’, you know, new like old style politics, but relabelled ‘new’. In fact, it’s the kind of cynical politics that have ensured people have been switching off for years.
It required the Tory grandee Ken Clarke to make some sense of Abbott and Labour’s nonsense:
“She’s actually been making an extremely coherent root-and-branch criticism of the bill, and she has an excellent record on these things; but the problem is, we’re meant to be debating whether this House of Commons will approve the second reading of the bill. She’s denouncing it from beginning to end, but is saying the opposition don’t intend to vote against it. This makes the proceedings quite absurd.”
Quite. But this farce as not yet complete. Just 90 minutes after Abbott’s speech, Labour completed a screeching U-turn by saying it would now oppose the Immigration Bill, even though its whips had already told MPs not to bother to turn up to vote. This, may I remind you, is Her Majesty’s Opposition and the shadow occupant of one of the great offices of state, the home office, Diane Abbott, does not appear to know her arse from her elbow.
“A new kind of politics?” Only because it’s new to have an opposition as bad as this lot. Lacking vision, ability, consistency and competence, this is the state of Labour and Diane Abbott is an outstanding example of why this is so.
