Diane Abbott has insisted she will stand for Labour in the election as she denied she had been offered a peerage to stand down.
The hard-Left Labour MP also said she would not accept a seat in the House of Lords, following reports that she and other Left-wingers had been offered them to make way for supporters of Sir Keir Starmer.
The denial came after her close friend, former shadow attorney general Baroness Chakrabarti, suggested that she may choose not to stand in the election.
Writing on X, Ms Abbott described reports she was considering pulling out as “factually incorrect”.
She said: “I have never been offered a seat in the Lords, and would not accept one if offered.
“I am the adopted Labour candidate for Hackney North and Stoke Newington. I intend to run and to win as Labour’s candidate.”
Sir Keir Starmer said on Friday that she is “free to go forward as a Labour candidate”.
However, some on the Left believe the Labour hierarchy would still prefer Ms Abbott to stand aside.
One senior figure on the Left said: “My guess is that is what they were trying to broker with Starmer saying ‘free to go forward’.
“In other words: she can, on the proviso that she won’t.”
He said he believed it had been the plan all along that she would not stand, but that the deal had unravelled when senior Labour figures briefed the deal to a national paper.
Her future has dominated Labour campaign
Another figure on the Left said: “The irony of it all is that I heard they had a deal that she’d step down, but then they went all triumphant and briefed it.
“If they’d let her go quietly with a bit of grace, this probably wouldn’t have happened and she’d have retired anyway.”
The question of the political future of the former shadow home secretary has dominated the early stages of the Labour election campaign.
However, she will not be able to stand if she fails to get approval from the party’s National Executive Committee (NEC) on Tuesday.
On Sunday morning, Baroness Chakrabarti told the BBC: “I hope she will take some time to consider what she wants to do, and that’s what I’ve suggested to her, as a friend.”
She said the question of whether Ms Abbott should stand should not be “decided by fans or detractors of my dear friend”.
She criticised the “Westminster bubble game” and said there had been a “sordid week of unauthorised anonymous briefings by overgrown schoolboys in suits”.
The advice from Baroness Chakrabarti, the former head of campaign group Liberty, comes after a week of muddle at the top of the Labour party over whether the hard-left MP should be allowed to stand in her north London seat.
She has been under investigation for more than a year over a letter she wrote suggesting the prejudice faced by Jewish people was not racism.
Meanwhile, Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, denied suggestions in The Sunday Times that Ms Abbott and others had been offered peerages to stand down and make way for allies of Sir Keir.
The paper said a number of Left-wingers have been told they will be elevated to the House of Lords if they make way for moderates in the Commons.
It is not the way the system works
But Ms Cooper told Sky News that she had heard of no such plan.
She said: “No party can do that, it’s not the way the system works.
“There’s a whole process with the independent committee that will vet nominations, there have to be processes in terms of the numbers of nominations, designated by the prime minister and so on. So, no party can do that or make those sorts of commitments.”
Asked if Sir Keir had promised anyone a seat in the Lords, she replied: “That’s not the way the system works.
“The thing that we do know is we’ve seen a series of quite shocking Conservative resignation honours lists from Boris Johnson to Liz Truss, and Keir has already said that he would change the way that he approaches all of those things.
“Indeed, he’s said that he wouldn’t have a resignation honours list as well because it’s been so distorted by the way that the Conservatives have done that.”
Ms Cooper also said she believed that Ms Abbott would end up standing for the party in Hackney North and Stoke Newington.
She added: “I assume so, yes. I mean I’m very glad it’s been resolved for Diane.
“She continues to be a very important figure in the Labour Party, all the things that she’s done the campaigning work that she continues to do, so I’m glad this has been resolved.”
Ms Cooper told the BBC that she “would obviously support her if she decides to stand… but it has to be Diane’s decision”.
She said: “This is for Diane to decide and I completely support that.”
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