Diane Abbott is used to being mistreated. Elected to parliament nine times since she became Britain’s first black female MP in 1987, she is the most abused member of the House.  

In the past week, she has suffered further insult. First, it was alleged that the businessman Frank Hester, who has donated over ten million pounds to the Conservative Party, told colleagues that she made him want to “hate all black women” and she “should be shot”.

Next, at Prime Minister’s questions, the Speaker denied Abbott the chance to have her say, as Sunak and Starmer mansplained whether what had been said about her was racist and sexist and whether the Tories should accept Hester’s cash.

Abbott’s treatment has aroused great sympathy. The Labour leader was one of the first to go over to her after PMQs. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do?” He asked solicitously. “Restore the whip” she replied several times. 

The irony of this vulnerable, seventy-year-old lady’s position is that she is currently facing likely political oblivion because of her own race-related comments. In a letter to The Observer last April she wrote that Irish, Jewish and Traveller people “undoubtedly experience prejudice…similar to racism” but that it is not comparable to the historic racism experienced by black people. “It is true that many types of white people with points of difference, such as redheads, can experience this prejudice.” She conceded, “But they are not all their lives subject to racism.”

The Labour Party judged her comments, seemingly downplaying the suffering of Jewish people among others, to be “deeply offensive and wrong”. Abbott was suspended from the party pending an investigation. She joined her friend, former lover, and neighbouring MP, Jeremy Corbyn in limbo. Unless they have the whip restored neither will be able to stand as Labour Party candidates at the fast-approaching general election.

Sir Keir Starmer has already ruled out any restoration for his predecessor as party leader. Corbyn’s tenure resulted in the party being investigated and criticized for antisemitism by the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Corbyn was kicked out for saying the problem was exaggerated and refusing to respect new and tougher regulation by the party.

Abbott immediately apologised “for any anguish caused”. The investigation into her has dragged on for nearly a year, far longer than other recent inquiries into suspended MPs. It is difficult not to feel that the Labour leadership was hoping the clock would run down to the election with her position still unresolved. That would allow for another Labour candidate to be chosen and almost certainly hold her safe Labour seat of Hackney North and Stoke Newington. Reconciliation and the offer of a seat in the House of Lords might have been possibilities after that. 

The shocking revelations of the past week have led to calls for a quick resolution now and her re-admittance into Labour. All of which leaves Sir Keir Starmer and other prominent members of the party in an awkward quandary what to do about her.

Along with Bernie Grant and Paul Boateng, Di Abbott was among the first Black British MPs elected to parliament. She has always been on the left of the party. But she has never defined herself by her race or her politics. She is an outspoken loner who has socialized across the political spectrum and has always done her own thing. 

She is the daughter of parents from Jamaica in the Windrush generation. She attended Harrow County Gramar School, where she got to know the youthful Conservative Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo. He would later join her for irreverent late night commentary on Andrew Neil’s show This Week. Next, she went to the elite Newham College at Cambridge University. In parliament, she struck up a friendship with her Tory pair Jonathan Aitken, and made him godfather to her son – who she, defiantly, sent to a private school in London. 

Di was the first person I met when I turned up for work on my first day in British television in 1983. “You look like a banker”, was her greeting, typical of her abrasive charm. At TV-am, she mainly busied herself at the back of the newsroom, answering correspondence relating to her role as a member of Westminster Council. When challenged at an annual review about her disappointing contribution to the channel, she was said to have replied to her bosses: “What do you expect when I have to work for ****ers like you?”. At the studio in Camden Lock, relief mingled with pride when she was elected. For decades afterwards, whenever we came across each other at Westminster, she would upbraid me for having “appalling table manners” (Not guilty, your honour).

Abbott was a member of Labour’s National Executive Committee from 1994-1997 but she was not in sympathy with Tony Blair’s new Labour. She came fifth and last in Labour’s 2010 leadership contest, not before her sharp and imperious tongue had written off her opponents – the Miliband brothers, Andy Burnham and Ed Balls – as “geeky men in suits”.

Ed Miliband graciously appointed her as a shadow spokesperson. Last week, Balls said “she should be brought back… she should be supported and defended rather than left on her own.”

Jeremy Corbyn promoted her to his Shadow Cabinet in 2015. She was not a success as Shadow Home Secretary and was said to be unwell after a shambolic interview with Nick Ferrari on LBC, where she appeared to have no idea how much Labour’s policy to add 10,000 more police officers would cost. The years have taken their toll. Abbitt has incurable diabetes and the diplomat son she brought up as a single parent has suffered serious mental health episodes. Far from the wit, intelligence and openness which used to characterize her in debate “she now addresses the electorate as if it is a slow-witted child”, in the words of The Times columnist Janice Turner. 

Expressions of sympathy from senior Labour figures seldom go as far as explicitly saying she must be given back the whip. Labour’s Deputy Leader Angela Rayner says, “Personally, I would like to see her back but the Labour Party has its procedures, what I say doesn’t matter.” Harriet Harman would be “sad” if she is not readmitted to the party. The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan and Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting have both merely expressed vague “solidarity” with her.

Sir Keir Starmer has already spelt out that restoring the whip is “an entirely different matter” from the abuse she has taken. Were Labour to accept that a quick apology was enough, it would undermine their attack that the Tories should give back Hester’s millions. Hester has also offered an apology of sorts. 

Di remains an icon and inspiration to the next generations of black and female politicians. Many would not be there without her example and determination. The saddest thing about this end phase of Di Abbott’s brave political career is that her future is being determined by what others, mostly white men, think about her. 

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The mass leak of intelligence is not a film plot and Teixeira is no James Bond. That was clear from the aerial shots from North Dighton Massachusetts of a gangly twenty-one year old in red shorts meekly giving himself up to the FBI “in connection with an investigation into alleged unauthorized removal, retention and transmission of national defence information”.

The insignificance of the suspect, the bloodlessness of the disclosures, the apparent lack of motive, all facilitated by online interconnectivity, are far removed from the ideologically motivated and painstaking human bravery and betrayal of cold war espionage. We are witnessing what Oscar Wilde might have called “The Decay of Spying”, at least of the kind celebrated in the fiction of Fleming, Le Carré and others and as documented by historians such as Ben Macintyre.

Intelligence agencies have an urgent need to work out what matters and what they can contribute in a world in which keyboard warriors may have nearly open access to what used to be classified information, denied to the public. 

This is not the first time the US government has been caught out by tech nerds. Wikileaks’ two most important sources – David, now Chelsea, Manning and Edward Snowden – shared a similar profile of tech-proficient young men with national security access. Like Teixeira they had “a dark view of the government”. Online friends of OG say he regarded law enforcement and the intelligence community as sinister forces out to suppress citizens and keep them in the dark.

Teixera stands out for his youth and immaturity. Everything that has been gleaned about him from his internet presence paints a picture of a puerile young man not far removed from an “incel” – involuntary celibate young men who are consequently hostile to women and wider society. 

The pseudonym OG is thought to stand for “Original Gangster”. Another of his aliases was “TexKilledYou”. He posted his information on Discord, a platform popular with gamers. Almost all those signed up to their particular server group were teenage boys and young men, interested in ‘God, guns and games”. They called their group “Thug Shaker Central” – a reference to an unpleasant online meme depicting “Thugs” (a racist reference to black men) shaking their bare buttocks.

He is also known to have made some casual references to Alt Right tropes. A video appears to show Teixeira firing a gun and making racist and anti-semitic slurs. His “anti-war” stance amounts to supporting Putin, since he argues Ukraine and Russia have equal rights in the war.

Teixeira enlisted as a reservist in the National Guard in 2019. He was mobilized for active service as an Airman 1^st Class last autumn in the 102^nd Intelligence Wing which has a mission to “provide worldwide precision intelligence and command and control along with trained and experienced Airmen for expeditionary combat support and homeland security.”

The Americans have been embarrassed by the documented evidence that they spy on allies, and by the unwanted spilling of the secrets of allies such as that the UK had the most special forces on the ground in Ukraine. Reports on weaknesses in Ukraine’s military posture might be useful to the Russians. 

President Biden claimed during his visit to Ireland: “There’s nothing contemporaneous that I’m aware of that is of great significance”. The assessments of Ukraine’s strength now revealed are out of date. Unfortunately it is not yet clear how long the leaked material has been available or who might have accessed it when it was more pertinent. The leaks came to wide attention because other Discord group members spread them across different platforms. The internet is still being combed through. 

Teixeira seems to have disclosed a minimum of 350 documents, containing the fruits of US spying on foes including Russia and friends including Ukraine, South Korea and Israel. His main motivation seems to have been simply to impress and “educate” his fanboys with what he knew about world affairs. 

The obvious question is: how could someone so junior have gained access to copy and disseminate “Top Secret” material. That is to misunderstand the nature of information in the digital age. There is so much of it, readily available electronically that it is now more difficult than ever to keep it out of the hands of casual or low level contacts, often with unfocussed motives for their treachery. 

What Teixeira purloined was widely available to thousands of people on active security service for the US thanks to JWICS – their Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System. This reflects the developing view in Western intelligence services that electronic technology and surveillance has made it near impossible to keep secrets closely guarded. Rather than on a restricted “need to know” basis, intelligence is increasingly treated as “need to share”. 

Last February the US and UK deliberately published their intelligence about Russia’s build-up for the invasion of Ukraine. In spite of President Putin’s denials, this official information hardly came as a surprise given the availability of “OSINT” – open source intelligence – already available on international media. The reason for the unexpected openness was political – to forewarn the public about what was likely to happen and to start building sympathy for Ukraine. 

On both sides of the Atlantic, governments are anxious to rebuild trust following the Iraq invasion. What turned out to be inaccurate intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction was exploited by politicians to justify war.

Intelligence agencies must now expect to take their share of blame in public for alleged mistakes. Following the chaotic pull-out from Afghanistan, then foreign secretary Dominic Raab criticized the spooks on the record for telling him that a Taliban takeover that year was “unlikely”. Rather than preserving cloak-and-dagger secrecy, the recent report into the Manchester Arena Bombing called for more sharing. Sir John Saunders bemoaned “problems with the sharing of information between the Security Service and Counter Terrorism Policing” which might have averted the attack. 

Anyone in possession of a smart phone generates a trail of readily available data which spies could have literally killed for in the past. Face recognition and digital ID deprives us all inevitably of aspects of privacy. Nations still find a need for individually targeted ISR – intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. But much of hard work of intelligence today consists of the gathering, evaluation and analysis of known data in real time. 

Britain’s signals intelligence centre GCHQ, whose very existence was once an official secret, is now prominent in the public profile of intelligence services. If puny Jack Teixeira has undermined the image of a macho spy like James Bond, the announcement of a mathematician Anne Keast-Butler as its first female Director General of GCHQ has buried the idea that spymasters should be like George Smiley.

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The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman, is sticking by David Cameron’s desire to limit the net number of people coming into this country to settle to “the tens of thousands”. Immigration has become another area where Sir Keir Starmer is lining the Labour Party up close to the Conservatives, albeit without setting a target in numbers. “British growth needs to get off its immigration dependency” he told the CBI annual conference this week, decisively jettisoning his 2020 commitment to maintain freedom of movement.  

Meanwhile, in the real world latest figures from the Office for National Statistics are that 1.1 million people migrated to the UK in the twelve months to this June, 704,000 of them from outside the EU. Sir Keir told his business audience “this is not about Brexit” but the headline net immigration figure is only kept to half a million (504,000) because almost half of those who have left the country in that time were EU citizens (275,000 out of a total exodus of 560,000). 

These are record figures and of them 381,459 were given the right to work mostly under the government’s skilled worker and health and care workers visa system.  The facts give the lie to Sir Keir’s declaration that “the days when low pay and cheap Labour are part of the British way of growth must end”. As the CBI told him, at best it will take years to get people already here to fill vacancies, if it can be done at all, while they need the workers to do the jobs right now. 

The large numbers are attributed to special factors, such as foreign students returning to their courses after the pandemic lockdowns, yet the net immigration total of half a million is bigger than the previous pre-Brexit, pre-Covid record in 2015, of 336,000.

 Predictably the government briefed newspapers that there will be a crackdown on students admitted to “non-elite” universities. Equally predictably the former University minister Lord (Joe) Johnson piped up that the universities need the money from foreigners, who play three times more than domestic students, and that no university should be teaching poor courses. 

Political parties justify their fantasy tough talking on immigration on the grounds that it is what the voters, especially those in the so-called “Red Wall”, want and expect to hear. Nigel Farage’s “Breaking Point” point poster is widely credited by politicians as a clincher in the EU referendum. “You are welcome to try that in my constituency”, a Shadow Cabinet member retorted sarcastically when I suggested that it might be time for a more honest debate. 

This week the Institute for Public Policy Research, a centre left think tank, produced some interesting research in a new report, A New Consensus – How Public Opinion Has Warmed to Immigration. Inflation and the economy are the public’s top concerns at 45%, according to IpsosMori. Immigration is down at 21% along with the NHS, just ahead of “lack of faith in the government” at 20%. It was an issue raised by 42% of Conservative voters but only 13% of Labour supporters. Baby boomers, aged 55 to 64, were the most concerned (40%), compared to 31% for the over 65, 34% for the under 55s, and a negligible 4% of voters under 25. The IPPR estimates that a more pro-immigration stance would mean a modest gain by Labour from swing voters. 

Other surveys show that the public is more bothered by the humanitarian chaos of the small boats crossing the channel, rather than the idea of people migrating to this country. These illegal migrants are caught in a Catch 22, one that was exposed by the Home Secretary this week. She told the select committee of MPs that only those legally entering this country should be considered for asylum, but was unable to explain what legal routes exist for them to come here.

In common with other G7 countries the British government has long paid lip service to the notion “genuine asylum seekers welcome, economic migrants bad”, while doing precisely the opposite, in spite of a relatively generous, if increasingly ponderous, level of acceptance of asylum seekers here. 

The hundreds of thousands getting visas are economic migrants, to the benefit of themselves and their hosts. Many send remittances home while their gainful occupations here boost the UK’s GDP.  

People have always migrated in search of a better life or even survival. At the end of last year the United Nations estimated that there are around 281 million international migrants, which includes around 30 million refugees. The movement of people is not going to slow down, thanks to the climate crisis, domestic conflicts and above all income inequality. The average income in the OECD’s high income bracket is more than 50 times the low income. Even if growth rates are higher in some parts of the developing world it will take more than a century to close that gap. 

Opportunities for education and growth are also easier to find in countries such as Britain. By no means everyone would go as far as Jeremy Corbyn who found himself in harmony with the CBI this week as he tweeted a counterblast to Starmer: “Without immigration, the trains wouldn’t run, businesses wouldn’t function and the NHS wouldn’t exist. We will not end cheap labour by dividing workers and belittling migrants’ contribution.” 

Still the UK’s demographic trend is that more than 10 million people will leave the workforce over the next twenty five years or so, without being replaced. Many of the retirees will need pensions, which are financed by those still in work and paying taxes. Without immigration, will there be enough of them? 

Germany faces a similar problem. Chancellor Merkel’s “wir schaffen das” decision to absorb more than a million Syrian migrants into the population was not purely motivated by humanitarianism. There are even those who argue that the resourceful young men who predominate amongst those crossing the Channel are just the sort of people we should want to recruit into our economy. Conservative MPs were amongst those urging Braverman to set up proper processing systems abroad so at least some of those now coming illegally can apply properly instead.

Britain’s record immigration total is also attributed to special circumstances, such as the need to take in those seeking refuge from the Ukraine war and the crackdown in Hong Kong. But it seems unlikely that there is going to any halt to global upheavals. Around the time of Brexit, the migrant flow was from the war in Syria, after that from Libya and Afghanistan. Then there is the steady stream of those escaping poverty or conflict in former colonies in sub-Saharan Africa. 

The West is not innocent of all that is going on in those countries now. The former British Empire recognises some sense of obligation to its former colonial subjects as lifeline journeys of some prominent members of the Conservative party illustrate. 

Beyond recognizing that net immigration into the UK is not going to stop, I don’t have the answers to this conundrum. Fear of the other or outsider is a human instinct and economic competition is a reality. 

But our politicians would serve the nation better if they found the courage to speak about the issues openly, instead of hollow posturing. The diverse British public might be mature enough to take it. Politicians talk tough against immigration, even while knowing that it is running at high levels.