Labour heavyweight Diane Abbott MP says the alleged rape of a teenage boy at a hotel hosting migrants at the taxpayers’ expense “is what happens when you demonise migrants” and appeared to blame Home Secretary Suella Braverman for the attack.
The veteran politician, who was Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary until 2020 and currently serves on the Home Affairs and Justice select committees of the House of Commons, made the comments on social media following reports of the alleged rape, which has seen a 30-year-old suspect charged, and a separate alleged sexual assault on a child under the age of 13, which has seen a suspect “believed” to be 17 charged, at a hotel hosting migrants.
“Teenage boy raped at hotel housing refugees. Terrible case. But it is what happens when you demonise migrants and take NO responsibility for safeguarding migrant children,” declared the 69-year-old, not explaining how exactly “demonising migrants” would prompt the raping of minors, but adding the hashtag #SuellaBravermanOut and a picture of the Home Secretary to make it clear who she holds responsible for the alleged attack.
Abbott, while lauded by many on the left as Britain’s longest-serving black MP and first black woman MP, is no stranger to controversy when it comes to pronouncements on crime, migration issues, and ethnic and racial politics.
In 2021, for example, she stoked tensions by implying that Black Lives Matter activist Sasha Johnson was shot in the head because she “stood up for racial justice”, despite police and witnesses suggesting that Johnson had actually been caught in the crossfire of a gang violence incident in which the suspects were black.
She also raised eyebrows when she sent her son to an expensive private school — despite opposing private schools as a matter of policy in parliament — by claiming that “West Indian [Carribean origin] mums will go to the wall for their children” and refusing to say whether she believed that “white mums and Anglo-Asian mums and so on” were worse mothers.
Despite the Hackney MP suggesting she had sent her son to a private school to keep him from being drawn into a life of crime, as an adult he was convicted of racially aggravated criminal damage, exposing himself, making threats, and multiple assaults on police officers and hospital workers, several female, in 2020, reportedly after becoming addicted to crystal meth while working as a Foreign Office diplomat.
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