* UPDATE 190517: An improved leaflet includes a photograph of Diane Abbott with Jeremy Corbyn and a clarification of her attitude to Brexit. The party’s election slogan was still omitted. As for the Conservatives, they seem to be giving up on toppling Abbott, instead calling on activists to quit Hackney to rush up to Enfield North to help Nick de Bois to keep his 1,692 majority for the Tories. See the leaked document below
NO MP HAS BEEN more unwavering in publicly supporting Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn than Diane Abbott.
There have been occasions when it appeared to slip briefly. Once, the Opposition leader was facing the Government in the House of Commons when one by one every member of his Shadow Cabinet, among them Abbott, apparently felt an urgent need to leave the chamber. Still, she was last to leave.
Yet so determined is Corbyn to keep his lieutenant that he override calls for her dismissal after her latest mistake, a hash of an interview with radio station LBC.
If, however, the Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP is so loyal, how can one explain her election publicity? The flyer shown here makes not one mention of the party leader. His electoral slogan, “For the many, not the few”, didn’t make it, either. Strange, because by the standards of British politics, it’s a good one.
The Shadow Home Secretary is just doing as many of the other retiring Labour MPs: distancing themselves from a leader whose socialism and decency appeal to young voters but whose political ineptitude — among other widely alleged failings — has prompted a powerful trade-union boss to predict disaster in the UK general election on Thursday 8 June 2017.
Why should the Cambridge-educated Abbott worry? Corbyn will face calls to quit the leadership but she will face no such calls, instead sitting comfortably. Her majority after the last election was 24,000. Safe!
David Altheer 180517
* Diane Abbott was asked to comment on the issues raised here but neither she nor anyone from her office was available.
* Backstory: Mystery Abbott illness; Postie Diane sends a broadside
* All pictures on this page © David.Altheer [at] gmail.com, and all for sale for reproduction (see last paragraph of Contact).
* Emboldened underscored words in most cases indicate a hyperlink, a reader service rare among websites. If a link does not work, it is probably because the site to which the URL refers has not been maintained.