Diane Abbott has been MP for hackney North and stoke Newington since 1987.

She has the distinction of being  the first black woman to win a seat in Parliament.

Her outspoken views on sll the key issues of the day have won her more social media insults and verbal attacks from right-wing loonies than any other MP. Earlier this year, Frank Hester, a multi-millionaire member and bank-roller of the Tory Party, said of her,”She makes me want to hate all black women.” He added his view that “She should be shot.”

Hester was not expelled from the Tory Party and his massive donations were not sent back.

Nor was he interviewed by the police for such hate-speech and incitement to violence.

When the matter was debated in the House of Commons, despite 46 attempts to catch the Speaker’s eye, she (merely the subject of the debate) was denied opportunity to speak.

In April, 2023, she wrote a letter to the press in which she simply stated the blindingly bloody obvious, that people with black or brown skins are more  evident targets for racists than minorities who are white-skinned, including Jews, Roma and Travellers.

In gauleiter Starmer’s Labour Party it is safest to steer well clear of the subject of race, because if you put a foot wrong, infringing his strict catechism, you provide an excuse for his bovine bully-boys to chuck you out. Accordingly Diane Abbott had the parliamentary whip suspended while the matter was subject to investigation.

She did apologise to the Party at the time, but that made no difference. (In my view, there wss nothing for which to apologise, but the Labour grandees who see anti-Semitism around every corner and in every nuance, already had their claws in her and smelt the blood of another  leftwinger.)

This very day (23rd April, Shakespeare’s birthday) marks the first anniversary of her suspension. Well, they must be making a very thorough and painstaking job of that investigation. After all, it was a rather brief letter.

Among the many who have called for the whip to be rstored are Angela Rayner, Starmer’s  Deputy Leader, and Harriet Harman, Mother of the house, but Starmer is implacable in hounding out leftwingers, although not so implacable when it comes to keeping policy promises.

Starmer’s plan may be to leave Diane Abbott in limbo right up to the general election, so that she cannot stand as a Labour MP. Or he may hope to be able to expel  her from the Party.