Diane Abbott hits out at ‘level of racism still in Britain’ as MP is cheered by supporters at rally
Diane Abbott has appeared at a rally where she hit out at the “level of racism that is still in Britain”, following a row over comments made about her.
Ms Abbott was greeted in Hackney, east London, with cheers and chants of “I stand with Diane” after a Tory donor’s reported offensive remarks.
The former Labour MP praised the people of Hackney whom she said “stood by her – year after year, decade after decade”.
Diane Abbott. File pic: PA
Politics latest: ‘Sunak chicken’ stunt outside Downing Street after PM rules out 2 May election
In the wake of the race row, she said: “This is not about me, this is about the level of racism that is still in Britain. This is about the way that black women are disrespected.”
The MP for Hackney and Stoke Newington, who was suspended from the parliamentary Labour Party last year, went on to say her mother came to Britain in the 1950s as a nurse.
“She was in that generation of black women who built the national health service,” she said.
Ms Abbott, who currently sits as an independent MP in the Commons, attended the rally days after comments by Tory donor Frank Hester emerged in The Guardian.
He reportedly said at a 2019 meeting that she made him “want to hate all black women” and that she “should be shot”.
Mr Hester, who is the chief executive of The Phoenix Partnership, said he was “deeply sorry” for the remarks, but insisted they had “nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin”.
Frank Hester. Pic: PA/CHOGM Rwanda 2022
The Conservatives have faced pressure to return the money Mr Hester has donated to the party in the wake of the row, which is understood to total £15m since 2019.
There have also been calls among Ms Abbott’s supporters for her to be allowed back into the parliamentary Labour Party again by having the whip restored.
Read more:
Rayner wants Abbott back in parliamentary Labour Party
Ms Abbott had the Labour whip removed from her last year following comments she made in the Observer in which she said Jewish, Irish and Traveller people do not face “racism” but instead suffer prejudice similar to “redheads” – something for which she later apologised.
On Friday night, The Independent reported Ms Abbott had not had the whip restored because she refused to take part in antisemitism training – a claim she rejected as a “blatantly shoddy piece of journalism”.
The Labour Party has said it does not comment on individual cases.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission’s Crypto Task Force has scheduled a roundtable discussion centered on privacy and financial surveillance for December, as a renewed focus on privacy grips the cryptocurrency industry.
The privacy roundtable is slated for Dec. 15. Like other SEC roundtables, crypto industry executives and SEC officials will discuss common pain points and solutions, but no hard policy proposals will be submitted.
Privacy has become a hot-button topic following several developments, including the partial guilty verdict in Tornado Cash developer Roman Storm’s trial in June, the Samourai Wallet developer sentencing in November and the privacy token price rally over the last two months.
“Authoritarians thrive when people have no privacy. When those in charge start being hostile to privacy protections, it is a major red flag,” said Naomi Brockwell, founder of the Ludlow Institute, an organization advocating for liberty through technology.
The renewed interest in privacy hearkens back to crypto’s cypherpunk roots, and one of the core reasons the cryptographic technology that underpins crypto was invented — to ensure secure communication channels between parties in hostile environments.
Related: Crypto investors flee visibility for anonymity as privacy coins surge 80%
Crypto community sounds the alarm about privacy following precedent-setting legal cases
The verdict in the Storm trial and other cases where open-source software developers have been convicted or imprisoned for creating non-custodial, privacy-preserving protocols has set a dangerous precedent for privacy technology in the US, legal experts have said.
Crypto industry executives and advocates argue that the prosecutions are meant to dissuade developers from building privacy-preserving tools.
The verdict in the Samourai Wallet case is analogous to the US government accusing car manufacturer Toyota of a conspiracy because terrorists and criminals also use their cars, according to journalist and crypto advocate Lola Leetz.
“People should not be held accountable for what other people do with the tools they build,” Leetz said.
In August, Matthew Galeotti, the acting assistant attorney general for the Department of Justice’s criminal division, signaled the agency would no longer prosecute open-source software developers for writing code.
“Our view is that merely writing code, without ill intent, is not a crime,” Galeotti said. “The department will not use indictments as a law-making tool. The department should not leave innovators guessing as to what could lead to criminal prosecution.”
Magazine: 2026 is the year of pragmatic privacy in crypto: Canton, Zcash, and more
Politics
All four UK governments ‘failed to appreciate’ scale of COVID pandemic threat – inquiry finds
All four UK governments failed to appreciate the scale of the threat posed by COVID-19 or the urgency of the response the pandemic required, a damning report published on Thursday has claimed.
Baroness Heather Hallett, the chair of the inquiry, described the response to the pandemic as “too little, too late”.
Tens of thousands of lives could have been saved during the first wave of COVID-19 had a mandatory lockdown been introduced a week earlier, the inquiry also found.
Noting how a “lack of urgency” made a mandatory lockdown “inevitable”, the report references modelling data to claim there could have been 23,000 fewer deaths during the first wave in England had it been introduced a week earlier.
The UK government first introduced advisory restrictions on 16 March 2020, including self-isolation, household quarantine and social distancing.
Had these measures been introduced sooner, the report states, the mandatory lockdown which followed from 23 March might not have been necessary at all.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
All four UK govts ‘failed to appreciate’ scale of pandemic
COVID-19 first emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan at the end of 2019, and as it developed into a worldwide pandemic, the UK went in and out of unprecedented lockdown measures for two years starting from March 2020.
Lady Hallett admitted in her summary that politicians in the government and devolved administrations were forced to make decisions where “there was often no right answer or good outcome”.
“Nonetheless,” she said, “I can summarise my findings of the response as ‘too little, too late'”.
‘Toxic culture’ at the heart of UK government
The report said there was “a toxic and chaotic culture” at the heart of the UK government during the pandemic.
The inquiry heard evidence about the “destabilising behaviour of a number of individuals” – including former No 10 adviser Dominic Cummings.
It said that by failing to tackle this chaotic culture – “and, at times, actively encouraging it” – former PM Boris Johnson “reinforced a culture in which the loudest voices prevailed and the views of other colleagues, particularly women, often went ignored, to the detriment of good decision-making”.
‘Misleading assurances’
The inquiry found all four governments in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland failed to understand the urgency of response the pandemic demanded in the early part of 2020.
The report reads: “This was compounded, in part, by misleading assurances from the Department of Health and Social Care and the widely held view that the UK was well prepared for a pandemic.”
The report notes how the UK government took a “high risk” when it significantly eased restrictions in England in July 2020 – “despite scientific advisers’ concerns about the public health risks of doing so”.
Lady Hallett has made 19 key recommendations which, if followed, she believes will better protect the UK in any future pandemic and improve decision-making in a crisis.
Repeated failings ‘inexcusable’
In a statement following the publication of Thursday’s report, Lady Hallett said there was a “serious failure” by all four governments to appreciate the level of “risk and calamity” facing the UK.
She said: “The tempo of the response should have been increased. It was not. February 2020 was a lost month.”
Read more:
A timeline of the UK’s response to the pandemic
Lady Hallett said the inquiry does not advocate for national lockdowns, which she said should have been avoided if at all possible.
She said: “But to avoid them, governments must take timely and decisive action to control a spreading virus. The four governments of the UK did not.”
Lady Hallett said none of the governments were adequately prepared for the challenges and risks that a lockdown presented, and that many of the same failings were repeated later in 2020, which she said was “inexcusable”.
She added: “Each government had ample warning that the prevalence of the virus was increasing and would continue to do so into the winter months. Yet again, there was a failure to take timely and effective action.”
-
Sports2 years agoStory injured on diving stop, exits Red Sox game
-
Sports3 years ago‘Storybook stuff’: Inside the night Bryce Harper sent the Phillies to the World Series
-
Sports2 years agoGame 1 of WS least-watched in recorded history
-
Sports3 years agoButton battles heat exhaustion in NASCAR debut
-
Sports3 years agoMLB Rank 2023: Ranking baseball’s top 100 players
-
Sports4 years ago
Team Europe easily wins 4th straight Laver Cup
-
Environment2 years agoJapan and South Korea have a lot at stake in a free and open South China Sea
-
Environment1 year agoHere are the best electric bikes you can buy at every price level in October 2024