The BBC, Channel 4 and Labour all knew about the comments Labour director of strategy Paul Ovenden made about Diane Abbott, yet kept them buried for over a year. And then, on Monday 15 September someone appeared to leak them to the Daily Mail. The Canary has been told that the Daily Mail unexpectedly ran the story after ITV were ‘finalising legal checks and were hours from broadcasting it’.
Moreover, none of the corporate media have acknowledged just where the leaked messages originate from in the first place: Paul Holden’s new book, The Fraud.
Ovenden was a key figure in Labour campaigning during the election, but corporate media and Labour itself kept his explicit comments about Abbott quiet. Ovenden has now resigned after the Daily Mail revealed the messages, while the Keir Starmer leadership is pretending to care about left-wing Abbott’s well-being after spending years side-lining her and attempting to remove her from politics.
Paul Ovenden: the messages
Paul Ovenden recounted his exchange about Abbott as follows, in Labour’s internal messaging app:
Ovenden: I have got something that will make you lol from last night. We were playing shag marry kill at PT. Honestly, I nearly wet myself from laughing.
Labour staffer: What??? I love that game!
Ovenden: REDACTED asking REDACTED who would use the strap on out of her and Diane Abbott was the highlight/lowlight. And then REDACTED’s phyiscal [sic] demonstration of REDACTED putting it on was amazing. ‘what are you doing? It’s so big it has shoulder staps’
Labour staffer: Hahaha that’s amazing!!! What was the answer? Some awful mental pics are assembling in my head.
Ovenden: We spent a lot of time discussing REDACTED going down on Diane. Hoenstly [sic] it was outrageous.
Labour staffer: Oh my god.
Of course, none of this is new. Former National Executive Committee (NEC) member Mish Rahman went to both the BBC and Channel 4 News with the story last year. Both outlets buried it:
https://x.com/mish_rahman/status/1967596721246204366
“Despicable”
Speaking about the revelation, Labour MP Nadia Whittome said:
The misogynistic comments about Diane Abbott, the longest serving Black MP, recounted with glee by Paul Ovenden are utterly despicable. The fact that the Party knew about this and swept it under the carpet until it was reported in the press, is unforgivable. The individual who made these comments, as well as those who covered it up and those now defending Ovenden, have no place in the Labour Party. Total solidarity with Diane.
Treating Abbott in such a way is not a new event from even within Labour. In 2022, Labour published a report from Martin Forde QC on discrimination in the party, where he wrote:
The criticisms of Diane Abbott [in the senior management team WhatsApp] were expressions of visceral disgust drawing (consciously or otherwise) on racist tropes and they bear little resemblance to the criticisms of white male MPs elsewhere in the messages.
Many other Labour aides don’t care one bit about what Abbott faces. According to Jessica Elgot at the Guardian, Ovenden’s resignation has “provoked pure unadulterated fury from long-serving Labour aides”. It looks like they aren’t angry about the comments themselves nor Labour’s tragic record in government so far, only the fact that Labour’s director of strategy had to resign.
Rot to the top – not just Paul Ovenden
On top of that, the Starmer leadership itself has long tried to drive Abbott out of the party. Starmer suspended Abbott for a second time in July after she stood by her previous comment that black people do not experience the same racism as white people from minority groups. Her point being that racists can always identify black people, whereas it’s unclear that people are Jewish or say, travellers. This was underscored by an intervention from Robert Peston who claimed he experiences the same racism as Abbott. Most people responded with the fact that they didn’t even realise he was Jewish, amplifying Abbott’s point.
Starmer also failed to reach out to Abbott after Tory donor Frank Hester called for her to be shot, in comments revealed in March 2024. She said Starmer’s lack of concern made her feel like a “non person”. Hester, a private healthcare CEO, who has made millions off public healthcare contracts, said that when he sees “Diane Abbott on the TV” he wants to “hate all black women” and thinks “she should be shot”.
Abbott faces the most misogynoir of any MP, yet Starmer pretends to be her friend while actually trying to silence her. This hyena in lion’s clothing approach is the epitome of Labour under Starmer, reflecting how much of the electorate must feel about him.
Starmer must go
However, what is more concerning with the whole Paul Ovenden affair is why so many figures in both the Labour Party and the corporate media sat on this story both during and after the 2024 general election.
That is, of course, a rhetorical point. We know why – and it was in an attempt to cement the power of the Labour right within the party.
Yet the skeletons in Keir Starmer’s closet are rapidly falling out; the same skeletons that belong to his right-hand man Morgan McSweeney too. The Canary is sure there are more revelations to come, not least in the upcoming Holden book The Fraud.
How much longer the PM, and McSweeney can last, remains to be seen. Because it seems that those skeletons they have desperately been trying to contain will soon bury them alive.
Additional reporting by Steve Topple
Featured image via the Canary
