Diane Abbott has said that she told Jeremy Corbyn not to set up a new party in opposition to Labour.

Speaking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival this afternoon, the Hackney North and Stoke Newington MP said: “There were people around Jeremy encouraging him to set up a new party, and I told him not to.”

Abbott’s comments refer to the new party set up by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana. Provisionally called Your Party, it is projected to pose a significant electoral challenge to Labour, particularly in cities.

Abbott’s comments came during an interview promoting her 2023 memoir, A Woman Like Me. It was her first public talk since she was re-suspended from the Labour party for saying that she did not regret an earlier letter to The Observer over which she had been suspended in 2023. In the letter, she wrote that Irish, Jewish, and Traveller people “undoubtedly experience prejudice” but not for “all of their lives”.

Abbott’s reasoning for advising Corbyn against the new party was that “it’s very difficult under a first-past-the-post system for a new party to absolutely win. If it wasn’t first-past-the-post, then you could see how a new party could come through.”

However, Abbott added that she “understood why [Corbyn] did it” and that she “understood why Zarah did it”. Corbyn was banned from standing for Labour in the 2024 election, having been suspended in 2020 for saying that the level of antisemitism in the party while he was leader had been “greatly overstated” by an EHRC report. Sultana was suspended in 2024 for rebelling against the whip in a vote on the two-child benefit cap.

Abbott described Sultana as “full of energy”, and called the pair a “great combination”. She concluded that “Jeremy’s party is going to do a lot better than people think, because a lot of people — not necessarily terribly Left-wing people — are a tiny bit disappointed about the way we’ve gone in the past year.”

Asked why she was disliked by the establishment in the Labour Party, Abbott replied: “I have no idea. I’m such a lovable person.” As to whether she foresaw a time in the future when she would be back at the heart of Labour, she said: “I think I am at the heart of the Labour Party. It’s other people who aren’t really.”

Abbott was critical of the Party’s current leadership throughout, despite initially recalling: “My friends have said to me, ‘Don’t be rude about Keir Starmer.’” On Gaza, she said it was “really shameful” that “the British Labour Party and the British Prime Minister have been so timid about speaking out.” She also called the proscription of Palestine Action “a disgrace”, adding that “what they are seeking to do is proscribe protest as such.”

But Abbott gave no indication that she would join organised political opposition to the party. She has “always been in the Labour Party” and is “probably too old to change”. Asked what she would do if she was ultimately expelled, she replied: “What I would probably do, first and foremost, is sit at home and read a lot of books about socialism.”