Peter Mandelson tried to ensure black MPs failed, claims Diane Abbott

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

Diane Abbott has said Peter Mandelson declined to give her media training when she was a Labour Party candidate, claiming he and others at the top of the party “tried to ensure black people failed”.

Ms Abbott, who is the longest serving black member of Parliament, was elected alongside three other black Labour MPs in 1987.

In her book, A Woman Like Me, the MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington recalls being asked to appear on BBC Question Time in 1986 while she was a parliamentary candidate.

The Labour politician claims she contacted Lord Mandelson, who was the party’s director of communications, four weeks in advance to ask for a media briefing – but she said it never came.

Ms Abbott claims in the book: “Weeks passed and no briefing came. With just a week to go, I was beginning to panic, so I rang him once more, but still Mandelson did not send a briefing.

“The day before filming I called him again in a real panic and we had a perfunctory conversation. He obviously was not interesting in helping me and did not care if I made a complete fool of myself.

“So it was a very nervous woman who arrived at BBC Television Centre to appear in front of the cameras on a national news and current-affairs programme for the first time. I had been given no briefing, no coaching and no support whatsoever from the Labour Party nationally.”

She said her experience with Lord Mandelson made her “wise to the face that those at the top of the party wanted it both ways: on the one hand, they insisted that Black candidates were a liability; on the other hand, they tried to ensure that we failed, by offering us no help whatsoever.”

However, Lord Mandelson strenuously denied her accusations calling them “insulting and absurd”.

He told The Independent: “If Diane was not supported by the party press office it would have been because of her politics - she was no more a political ally of Neil Kinnock than she is of Keir Starmer - not her ethnicity.

“To suggest otherwise is absurd and insulting to Labour staffers at the time who fought for equality in all walks of life.”

Ms Abbott’s bombshell memoir also saw the Labour veteran take aim at former party leader Neil Kinnock, claiming he viewed his black MPs as “an embarrassment”.

She is deeply critical of Lord Kinnock’s leadership, accusing him of “dismissing the concerns of Black people”.

Recalling her experience after being elected, Ms Abbott said she and her fellow black MPs felt they were “not allowed to bask in the glory of our achievement” as both the Labour leadership and party officials “did not see it as a triumph and noticeably did not celebrate it as such”. Lord Kinnock also strongly denied those accusations.