00:00MP Diane Abbott stated that it was obvious the Labour leadership wanted her out of the party after being suspended for a second time over comments she had made about racism.
00:13Labour announced that it had launched an investigation into Abbott's defence of a 2023 letter to a newspaper in which she had claimed that people of colour experienced racism all their lives, which she had distinguished from the prejudice experienced by Jewish people, Irish people and travellers as well.
00:36The London MP had apologised for those remarks at the time following criticism from Jewish and traveller groups and had been readmitted to the party after a lengthy suspension as well.
00:52Now, when asked recently by the BBC's James Naughty if she looked back on the entire incident with regret, she responded on the radio show that she did not regret it at all.
01:06In that interview with Naughty, which had been recorded in May of 2025, she had stated that there must be a clear difference between racism, which was about colour and other types of racism, because a traveller or a Jewish person walking down the street could not be immediately identified.
01:27She also explained that one wouldn't know unless they stopped to speak with them or were meeting or were meeting them, whereas if someone saw a black person walking down the street, they could immediately see that that person was black.
