Labour MP Diane Abbott is being roundly mocked in various parts of the internet because of a question she asked as Shadow International Development Secretary, a position she held until last week when she was promoted to Shadow Health Secretary.
She asked:
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, what steps she has taken to assist people in the Indonesian province of Province of Davao del Norte affected by the drought in that province.
The reply was crushing:
There is no province called Davao del Norte in Indonesia.
Actually, there is a place called Davao del Norte suffering droughts. In the Philippines. So a staffer in Diane Abbott’s office made a mistake. We all do it. Why make a fuss?
The Guido Fawkes blog has been one of those poking fun at Abbott. It’s not surprising behaviour from a right wing sensationalist site.
Ultimately, Diane Abbott’s question was well-intentioned and focused around helping some very vulnerable people. Her successor, if she has one who stays in office for more than five minutes, can resubmit it with the correct details. It’s not a big deal.
I was more concerned seeing the story being shared by Liberal Democrats on social media. Maybe we need to get past being amused by genuine mistakes and concentrate on what really matters.
Abbott’s error is a million miles away from the spectacle we’ve seen over the past few months of self-serving politicians setting out to deceive the country – and succeeding – purely to further their own ambitions. The tragedy of that is double-edged.
Firstly, that sort of self-serving politician is actually a pretty rare thing. Most of them, from all parties, are decent people who want to make the world a better place.
Secondly, the idea that politicians are just a bunch of self serving useless individuals is most popular amongst those who feel disengaged from politics and who have just been manipulated and deceived by the likes of Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage and Andrea Leadsom. Two of these are in the running to be Prime Minister. That is scary.
I disagree with Diane Abbott more often than I agree with her, but with so much else going on in politics at the moment, we need to concentrate on what actually is important. There are economic, political and constitutional crises emanating from the Brexit referendum to be sorted. There are many reason to worry about Labour, who seem to be caught up in the most irreconcilable differences when we need a coherent opposition, but this question isn’t one of them.
Everyone makes mistakes. The right response to Abbott’s is “there but for the grace of the Flying Spaghetti Monster go I.”
Labour of course would have been all over it had the mistake been made by someone else.
The way we conduct our politics needs to change. Rather than scoring cheap points, we need to be showing that we really are tackling the issues of the day. That way, if people see that their concerns are being heard and tackled, they will regain confidence and that’s good for all of us.
* Caron Lindsay is Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and blogs at Caron's Musings. You can find her on Bluesky at caronmlindsay.bsky.social
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20 Comments
IAWTP. Seeing that question and answer being gleefully shared around earlier didn’t sit right with me. Though I can appreciate where the shadenfreude comes from when it concerns a tribalist like Abbott.
I don’t agree. If Abbott was genuinely concerned about the people affected by this drought – rather than just firing off a quick question to score a cheap point – then it is not unreasonable to expect her to know in which country the drought actually is. It was Abbott’s cynical opportunism that is exposed by this question, which she clearly made no effort to research.
Much though I deeply respect you Caron and the place in your heart from which this article comes, mocking politicians who make mistakes has been part of our political culture for hundreds of years. Yes we can change political culture but this is one I think is healthy. Mockery is preferable to more nasty manifestations of political dissent.
I agree, bullying like this isn’t good. The important thing is that she was asking questions about a place suffering from drought, and she got the name of the town right, just not the country.
I’d prefer to agree with you, Caron, and on the main issue that you raise I most certainly do – but I’m afraid Diane Abbott was a disastrous appointment by Corbyn. It was one of his major mistakes inspired – I believe – more by her personal loyalty than by her talent and ability.
If she’s going to ask a question she should at least get the country she’s referring to right.
@Stephen: Satire will always have its place, certainly, and so it should as none of us should take ourselves too seriously. What got me was that the right, who have done so much damage to our country recently, were making so much of what is a fairly trivial mistake.
I think we shouldn’t sweat the small stuff when there are so many huge issues to deal with.
Scoring points is what she considers to be her job. If she scores them at the wrong end then she is a waste of space. She is now Labour’s shadow health secretary. That position requires mastery of vast amounts of detail. She is not remotely up to it.
I was happy to share it. Diane Abbott has no hesitation about smearing us during the coalition and is one of the most patronizing politicians around. For those who care about such things she is currently helping to destroy the Labour party.
It seems strange to me to consider mockery of obvious incompetence unreasonable or unfair. If you take on a position and can’t handle its duties, mockery should be a useful corrective and spur to do better. We don’t need to hide politicians from the consequences of their incompetence, dishonesty or laziness. We’ve just seen how politicians who enjoy such protections have lied the UK into the disastrous folly Brexit – and how they and their stooges continue to receive immunity for their falsehoods and crass xenophobia from far too much of the community. Britain needs to be more outspoken, more blunt in criticizing failure to perform to reasonable standards of competence (which surely includes doing your basic research on a topic), more ready to hold politicians to account – not less.
To be honest, I’d think that asking about the right country at Foreign Affairs questions is a pretty basic level of competence. I’d find it embarrassing if Tom Brake made that mistake.
While one could go overboard being snide about this mistake, for the reasons outlined by Caron, I don’t think there’s anything wrong about drawing attention to it, in part to counteract the trend towards “post-fact” politics. Ironically, for those concerned about the drought in Davao del Norte, the error and the social media response has brought attention to the issue. I hadn’t heard of this drought before. If Abbott had got her (very basic) facts right, it’s unlikely anyone would have paid attention to her question.
Diane Abbott has received answers to 59 written questions in the past year, which is more than one a week. One slipping through with a mistake in it by researcher in their early 20s on less than £25k who probably couldn’t find Blackburn on a map will happen from time to time. The government response would be funny if they went on to answer the obviously intended question, otherwise it’s a bit petty of them.
If the researcher submits the questions, what is the point of the shadow minister. A province with a Hispanic name in Indonesia fails a sanity test for anyone with a passing interest in the subject. It should at least trigger a second opinion from Cortana.
‘ the Indonesian province of Province of Davao del Norte ‘
When I read that above, before I knew anything else about the matter, my immediate reaction was ‘why would an Indonesian province have a Hispanic name – sounds more like the Philipines’. So I am astonished that neither the MP nor the aide or civil servant who drafted the question spotted it. If the MP trusted an aide to draft it, she would want to have the aide’s ‘guts for galusses’, to use an Ulster phrase.
However, two wrongs don’t make a right. The real issue is whether the UK is doing as much as it should for international development and specifically for the people of Davao del Norte. Those people people did not deserve a dismissive reply and their home being subject to mockery.
Surely the ministerial response could well have responded to the actual problem in the provence of the Philipines concerned as well as pointing out the mistake? The mistake is a little giggle of life. Of course it should not have been made but it is tomorrow’s chip paper. In a way, this thread is drawing more attention to the matter than it deserves.
Diane Abbot as Health Secretary would be asking questions about matters she knows even less about ! She cannot even discuss these issues without bringing up the American health situation , as though the only reform here , means becoming like the US.
She is tribal Labour of the most patronising tendency . She is a media darling reliant on her few chums in her favourite programmes ie the only ones she is a favourite of !
Now she is satire itself.
But the nature of modern social media and the nastiness it can lead to ,means we must judge her on all of these and more .But that means being fair , decent , and not as patronising as she is herself !
This reflects the petty point-scoring that turns many people off party-based electoral politics. Yes, it’s not new. Does that make it right?
Oh, and as I once stressed in the council chamber the importance of making an underpass free for muggers, I know the feeling.
Simon Banks – I had a painfully similar experience. In a speech about being more inclusive in local government I ended up saying we should “widen the Town Hall” .
Diane Abbott has a sense of humour and does not take herself too seriously. I would doubt very much she felt in any way crushed or humiliated by the reply but probably laughed at her own mistake. If it had been that important it would have been resubmitted but it hasn’t been.
@Simon Banks. Surely you should be charging them a license fee if they are using the underpass as a place of business? I hope you didn’t have to close a library to pay for that policy.