'Intellectually incoherent'........

Diane Abbott has been the Member of Parliament for Hackney North and Stoke Newington since 1987, when she became the first black woman to be elected to the House of Commons.

Now you would think that her upbringing in post-war London, education at Harrow County Grammar School for Girls followed by Newnham College, Cambridge, employment with the Home Office and then the National Council for Civil Liberties, a short stint at Thames Television then working for Ken Livingstone at the GLC….oh and a period as Head of Press and Public Relations at Lambeth Council…..would have taught her something.

Obviously not as she continues to make the headlines for reasons of, ‘I’m sorry for any offence caused’…….

On 4 January 2012, Abbott tweeted that, “white people love playing ‘divide and rule’. We should not play their game“…….a comment that drew widespread criticism including calls for her resignation.

But Diane has form…..in 1996 she commented that at her local hospital, ‘ blond, blue-eyed Finnish girls’ were unsuitable as nurses because they had ‘never met a black person before’.

But it was her put down of David Cameron and Nick Clegg that troubled me the most…….when she referred to them as ‘two posh white boys’.

Ok, so what if Nick did go to Westminster School and David, Eton College. And is it really such a bad thing to be accepted by Robinson College, Cambridge (Clegg) or Brasenose College, Oxford (Cameron). And the use of ‘boys’…..I’ll give her the ‘benefit of doubt’ on that use of language.

No, what has always concerned me with Diane Abbott is her lack of intellectual honesty. Her decision in 2003 to send her son to the private City of London School which she herself described as ‘indefensible’ and ‘intellectually incoherent’ caused considerable controversy and media criticism.

That said, I reckon her son’s analysis of the decision went something like this……’I want to go private Mum….I don’t want to go to school in Hackney’.