Diane Julie Abbott (born 27 September 1953) is a British politician who has served as a Member of Parliament (MP) for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987. She was the first black woman elected to the UK Parliament, and in 2024 became its longest-serving female MP, earning the title Mother of the House. A former Shadow Home Secretary and Privy Counsellor, Abbott has been a prominent figure on the Labour left and a vocal campaigner on issues of race and inequality. She was suspended from the Labour Party in 2023 over comments about racism, later apologised, and had the whip restored ahead of the 2024 general election. In July 2025, she was suspended again after reiterating those remarks in a BBC interview, and sat as an independent MP until July 2026, when the whip was restored following the ascension of Andy Burnham as Labour leader.
Early life and career Diane Abbott was born on 27 September 1953 in Paddington to Jamaican parents. Her father was a welder and her mother a nurse. Both of her parents left school at the age of 14. She attended Harrow County School for Girls (a grammar school) and then Newnham College, Cambridge, where she studied history, achieving a lower second-class degree (2:2). At Cambridge, one of her supervisors was Simon Schama.
After university, Abbott became an administration trainee at the Home Office (1976 to 1978), and then a Race Relations Officer at the National Council for Civil Liberties (1978 to 1980). She was a researcher and reporter at Thames Television from 1980 to 1983, and then a researcher at the breakfast television company TV-am from 1983 to 1985. She was a press officer at the Greater London Council under Ken Livingstone from 1985 to 1986, and Head of Press and Public Relations at Lambeth Council from 1986 to 1987.
In 2024, during the Undercover Policing Inquiry into the conduct of about 139 undercover police officers who infiltrated and disrupted social justice groups, the Metropolitan Police apologised for using undercover officers to spy on anti-racism campaigners, including Abbott, during the 1980s and 1990s. Many secret police reports on Abbott were uncovered by the inquiry. Abbott criticised these activities as being racist and unjustified.
Abbott's career in politics began in 1982 when she was elected to Westminster City Council, serving until 1986. In 1983, she was active in the Labour Party Black Sections movement, alongside Bernie Grant, Paul Boateng and Keith Vaz, campaigning for greater African Caribbean and Asian political representation. In 1985, she sought to be selected in Brent East, losing out to Ken Livingstone.
Parliamentary career At the 1987 general election, Abbott was elected to Parliament as MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, winning with 48.7% of the vote and a majority of 7,678. She was the first black woman to become an MP.
Abbott has served on a number of parliamentary committees on social and international issues and held shadow ministerial positions in successive shadow cabinets. For most of the 1990s, she also served on the Treasury Select Committee of the House of Commons. She went on to serve on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. She gave birth to her son in October 1991, one year before the House of Commons introduced a crèche.
At the 1992 general election, Abbott was re-elected as MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington with an increased vote share of 57.8% and an increased majority of 10,727. She was again re-elected at the 1997 general election with an increased vote share of 65.2% and an increased majority of 15,627. She was again re-elected at the 2001 general election, with a decreased vote share of 61% and a decreased majority of 13,651. She was again re-elected at the 2005 general election, with a decreased vote share of 48.6% and a decreased majority of 7,427.
Abbott's speech on civil liberties, in the debate on the Counter-Terrorism Bill 2008, won The Spectator magazine's "Parliamentary Speech of the Year" award, and further recognition at the 2008 Human Rights awards.
Abbott chairs the All-Party Parliamentary British-Caribbean Group and the All-Party Sickle Cell and Thalassemia Group. She is the founder of the London Schools and the Black Child initiative, which aims to raise educational achievement levels amongst black children.
At the 2010 general election, Abbott was again re-elected, with an increased vote share of 55% and an increased majority of 14,461.Statement of People Nominated Hackney Borough Council
At Goldsmiths' College, on 26 October 2012, a jubilee celebration was held to honour Abbott's 25 years in Parliament, with participants in a series of contributions including Herman Ouseley, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Kadija Sesay, Aminatta Forna, Shami Chakrabarti, SuAndi, Yvonne Brewster, Malika Booker, Zena Edwards and others.
At the 2015 general election, Abbott was again re-elected with an increased vote share of 62.9% and an increased majority of 24,008. At the snap 2017 general election, she was again re-elected with an increased vote share of 75.1% and an increased majority of 35,139.
A speech by Abbott in a House of Commons debate on the Caribbean is included in Margaret Busby's 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa.
At the 2019 general election, Abbott was again re-elected, with a decreased vote share of 70.3% and a decreased majority of 33,188.
At the 2024 general election held on 4 July, Abbott was re-elected with a vote share of 60%.
Abbott was given the honorific title Mother of the House as the longest continuously serving female MP, delivering her first speech in that role on 9 July 2024, when she congratulated new MPs and said: "It is a great job and you will never regret coming here. ... When I was a new member in 1987, there were only 40 female members of Parliament. Today we have 264, and some of us are glad that we have lived to see this. And I can't speak about the increased numbers of female members of Parliament without referencing my predecessor Baroness Harriet Harman, who did so much to work to have an equal and diverse House." Tributes were paid to Abbott by Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle, as well as by Prime Minister Keir Starmer.
2010 leadership election and frontbench role
On 20 May 2010, Abbott announced her intention to stand in the Labour leadership contest. She secured the necessary 33 nominations, assisted by the withdrawal of John McDonnell and support from David Miliband and Jack Straw, among others. On 25 September 2010, Ed Miliband was announced as the new leader of the Labour Party, Abbott having been eliminated in the first round of voting after securing 7.24% of votes.
Abbott was later appointed Shadow Minister for Public Health by Ed Miliband, taking shadow responsibility for a range of issues including children's health, maternity services, sexual health, tobacco, nursing, obesity and alcohol abuse. Following her move onto the front bench, the Telegraph said on 27 September 2011 that Abbott had "become one of Labour's best front bench performers".
On the issue of abortion, Abbott has become a vocal "pro-choice" supporter, opposing moves towards changing abortion counselling policy, and reducing the abortion time limit. She resigned from a cross-party group on abortion counselling, saying it was no more than a front to push forward an anti-abortion agenda without debate in parliament.
In 2011, she voted in favour of military intervention in Libya.
On 5 February 2013, following the Second Reading, Abbott voted in favour of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill.
Removal from the frontbench and 2015 London mayoral election
On 8 October 2013, Abbott was sacked as Shadow Public Health Minister in a reshuffle by Labour leader Ed Miliband, and replaced by Luciana Berger. On 23 June 2014, Abbott had stated she would consider standing in the 2016 London mayoral election; on 30 November 2014, Abbott announced her intention to put herself forward to become Labour's candidate in the election, but was unsuccessful in the 2015 nomination process.
She was one of 16 signatories of an open letter to Ed Miliband in January 2015 calling on the party to commit to oppose further austerity, take rail franchises back into public ownership and strengthen collective bargaining arrangements.
Return to the frontbench A close ally of Jeremy Corbyn, Abbott was one of 36 Labour MPs to nominate him as a candidate in the Labour leadership election of 2015. Following Corbyn's election as Labour leader, Abbott was appointed to the post of Shadow Secretary of State for International Development.
On 27 June 2016, following the resignations of many of Labour's shadow ministerial team in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum, Abbott was promoted to the position of Shadow Health Secretary.
On 6 October 2016, following the resignation of Andy Burnham, Abbott was appointed Shadow Home Secretary. Following the Article 50 vote in February 2017, Abbott was involved in a controversy with fellow MP David Davis.
She was sworn of the Privy Council on 15 February 2017.
2017 general election
On 2 May 2017, during that year's general election campaign, Labour's pledge to recruit an extra 10,000 police officers was overshadowed by Abbott's inability to give accurate funding figures. In an interview on LBC Radio with Nick Ferrari, she repeatedly struggled to explain how the promise would be funded. In the interview, Abbott frequently paused, shuffled her papers and gave out the wrong figures.Crace, John (2 May 2017), The Politics sketch, The Guardian. When asked about her performance, the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, insisted he was not embarrassed by what many pundits called a "car crash" interview.
In a further interview conducted by ITV on 5 May 2017, as the 2017 local elections results were being announced, Abbott was again unable to give accurate figures on the Labour Party's performance suggesting that the party had a net loss of 50 seats. However, her figure was corrected by the interviewer who stated that Labour had in fact lost 125 seats, at which point Abbott said that the last figures she had seen were a net loss of around 100.
Appearing on Andrew Marr's Sunday morning programme for the BBC on 28 May, Abbott's apparent support for the IRA nearly 35 years ago came up, along with some parliamentary votes Marr thought questionable. These included her advocacy of the abolition of "conspiratorial groups" such as MI5 and Special Branch in the late 1980s, both of which she said had been successfully reformed. She defended a vote opposing the proscription of a list of groups, including al-Qaeda, on the basis that some of the others had the status of dissidents in their country of origin and Abbott would have voted to ban al-Qaeda in isolation. According to Sam Coates in The Times, this appearance was arranged without the consent of Labour's campaign team.
On 5 June 2017, during a Sky News interview, Abbott was unable to answer questions about the Harris report on how to protect London from terror attacks. She insisted that she had read the report, but was unable to recall any of the 127 recommendations. When asked if she could remember the specific recommendations, Abbott said: "I think it was an important review and we should act on it." Abbott also denied reports that Corbyn and shadow chancellor John McDonnell were attempting to stop her from making broadcasts. The next day, Abbott withdrew at the last minute – citing illness – from a joint interview on Woman's Hour on 6 June, in which she had been due to face her Conservative frontbench opposite number Amber Rudd. On 7 June, Corbyn announced that Abbott was "not well" and had stepped aside in her role as Shadow Home Secretary. Lyn Brown was temporarily assigned to replace her. Barry Gardiner said in a radio interview on LBC that Abbott had been diagnosed with having a "long-term" medical condition, and was "coming to terms with that".