Much Ado About Melanin

So Diane Abbott pens a letter pointing out – quite calmly, and with more care than most of Westminster manages on a good day – that racism based on skin colour tends to be visible, immediate, and inescapable. She then notes that some other forms of prejudice, while no less vile, don’t always jump out at you in the street. That’s it. That’s the scandal. You’d think she’d marched into Golders Green with a placard and a loudhailer, the way they’re carrying on.

But here we are – the commentariat having a fit, Labour HQ scuttling under a desk, and the BBC tone-policing like a sixth-form debating coach who’s just discovered one of the students has read Fanon without permission.

Let’s be clear: this wasn’t a gaffe. It wasn’t a rant. It wasn’t “clumsy,” unless we now expect every utterance on race to come footnoted, triple-disclaimed, and blessed by a diversity subcommittee before it's safe for public consumption. It was, if anything, unusually precise. She said: racism often operates differently when it’s based on skin colour because skin colour is visible. Not that other forms of racism don’t exist. Not that they don’t matter. Just that they function differently. A perfectly legitimate point – and one echoed in academia, human rights law, and lived experience.

But no. That’s not allowed. You can practically hear the panic in Labour HQ: “Oh no! Someone’s said something nuanced. Quick – disown her before the Daily Mail puts it in 72-point red!” And so, once again, Abbott is chucked under the bus marked “permanent suspension pending further grovelling” while the party of working-class solidarity courts Mail readers with all the sincerity of a vegan at a hog roast.

It’s all getting a bit BBC, isn’t it? That familiar, twitchy reflex to turn everything into a false equivalence, a both-sides wobble. Never mind what’s true – the real crime is sounding like you’ve got an opinion not run past three PR consultants. We've replaced moral clarity with HR-speak, and now even seasoned MPs are expected to talk like laminated safety posters.

Meanwhile, the Right – who wouldn’t know a hate crime if it booted them in the ballot box – are suddenly born-again anti-racists, gleefully accusing Abbott of denying the Holocaust, the Porajmos, and the Plantation all in one breath. Let’s be honest – this is less about antisemitism or anti-Traveller hatred, and more about finding new ways to punish a Black woman who’s never played by the rules and refuses to be cowed by focus group fear.

And the great irony? Abbott’s point was about visibility – and now she’s been made invisible. Silenced, sidelined, and smeared, just for daring to suggest that how we experience prejudice depends on how we’re seen. Which, given the reaction, seems to have proven her point rather neatly.

So yes – much ado about bugger all. But it serves a purpose. It keeps Labour bland, the BBC fretful, and the public scared of saying anything real. Heaven forbid we allow a bit of honesty to slip through the cracks.

After all, it’s not about what you mean. It’s about what someone might choose to hear – and whether Keir Starmer thinks it’ll cost him half a seat in the West Midlands.