An admirable woman and a trail blazer

I already have a great deal of respect and admiration for Diane Abbott. What she has had to put up with over the years is appalling.

Interesting article. Diane Abbot was a trailblazer and the fact that she has remained an MP for so long is to her credit. Dawn Butler is another. No one deserves such abuse as she has endured.

Whenever I find myself rolling my eyes at Diane Abbot ( she can be a very patronising speaker I find), I remind myself of what she has endured, the sneering comments, the threats she receives, and I stop and listen to what she is saying rather than how she is saying it. She is a very clever woman and it is to her credit that she has stuck with it.

She was a trailblazer, Harrow County Grammar School, Cambridge degree.

No one deserves the amount of abuse she has received over the last years. She is gaff prone, the same as many other MP’s , hers just seem to be publicised more.

I'm not Diane Abbot's number one fan but do admire her for not being an opportunist and selling-out her political principles during the Blair years.

If she'd toed the party line she could have progressed in the hierarchy and had a place in Blair's cabinet - after all she ticked a lot of boxes: a women, black, single parent, working class state school girl; as well as being educated and intelligent.

But she chose a different path so that's something to be admired.

I used to enjoy Diane Abbott when she was on This Week with Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo. They made interesting viewing.