She has been an outspoken opponent of the Establishment for three decades, but the Labour MP Diane Abbott is finally about to join it.
Whitehall officials will announce tomorrow that the shadow home secretary is to join the privy council and swear allegiance to the Queen.
She will be accompanied by Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, who is a former barrister and the wife of a High Court judge.
Abbott is the latest Labour frontbencher who made their name as a far-left firebrand to join the privy council. It will entitle her to be referred to as “right honourable”.
Jeremy Corbyn, a lifelong republican, refused to kneel before the Queen — the usual practice — when he was sworn in last year. The Labour leader said he and the Queen “shook hands like adults”.
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Abbott has hardly been a cheerleader for the monarchy. In 2014 she tweeted, “Queen down to her last million”, and posted a link to a report on the monarch’s wealth.
It has twice been reported, including in The Guardian, that in the 1980s Abbott co-authored a pamphlet calling for the abolition of the monarchy. “We are not interested in reforming the police, armed services, judiciary and monarchy. We are about dismantling them and replacing them with our own machinery of class rule,” the article said.
Abbott last night insisted that the pamphlet “does not exist”, adding: “These are not my views.”
She declined to say whether she would kneel before the Queen. “Privy council proceedings are private and I cannot divulge them,” she added.
Thornberry’s spokesman said she would both kneel and kiss the Queen’s ring. “Emily will do all of that,” he said.
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Labour news in brief
https://twitter.com/shippersunbound Corbyn hires train row firm for PR
https://twitter.com/shippersunbound Labour has hired a communications agency used by Virgin Trains with whom Jeremy Corbyn had a public spat earlier this year over the availability of seats, writes James Lyons.
The company, Krow, is helping to relaunch Corbyn as a left-wing populist who can tap into anti-politics sentiment.
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The Labour leader criticised Virgin after he was filmed sitting on the floor of one of its trains, but the firm released footage showing he had earlier walked past empty, unreserved seats.
A source close to Corbyn said it would be “petty” to hold a grudge against Virgin or a company that worked for them. “It is not like Jeremy won’t take Virgin trains because there was a bit of a kerfuffle with them at one point,” the source added.
Frontbencher’s Cuban Christmas
The shadow justice secretary, Richard Burgon, will spend much of the Christmas break in Cuba.
The travel plans of Burgon, a close ally of party leader Jeremy Corbyn, emerged when senior Labour figures were asked about their availability for a duty rota.
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The Leeds East MP is among loyalists marked for media appearances but was allowed to “swan off to Cuba and leave us all to do the hard graft” despite the prisons crisis, one shadow cabinet source complained. Burgon failed to respond to inquiries.
He has been a cheerleader for Cuba’s former leader, Fidel Castro, who died last month.
At a memorial event, he said: “We should defend the gains and achievements . . . of the Cuban revolution.”
Assad champion went to Oxford
The Oxford-educated son of an actuary from Cheltenham runs the newspaper that caused outrage last week by lauding the Syrian dictator Bashir al-Assad’s troops for “liberating” Aleppo.
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Ben Chacko, a former grammar school pupil, took charge of the Morning Star, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s favourite newspaper, last year. He has previously conceded that his upbringing would generally be regarded as “middle class” but, as he told the New Statesman magazine, he objects to the term because “I don’t think it has a clear economic meaning”.
Conrad Landin, the newspaper’s industrial reporter, studied at Christ’s College, Cambridge.
