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"London shouldn't have another white, middle-aged man as mayor"


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http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2015/07/03/diane-abbott-london-doesn-t-need-another-white-middle-aged-m 

London doesn't need yet another middle-aged, white man as mayor, Diane Abbott suggested last night, as she called on her party to make her Labour's first black female candidate for City Hall.

 

The Hackney MP said the city had been led for too long by people who look like her rival, Harrow West MP Gareth Thomas.

 

"Gareth has said that he knows what leadership looks like," Abbott told a hustings in central London last night.

 

"And of course what Gareth literally means is that it looks like him.

 

"And it is a reasonable thing to say, because the leadership in local government in London have looked like him since the days of the London council…

 

"I am saying to you in the 21st century, in the most international, global city in the world if you want to know what the leader of London looks like, you are looking at me, the next mayor."

 

Abbott's comments are at odds with her previous insistence that identity should not be the defining factor in the mayoral race.

 

Following comments earlier this year from Margaret Hodge that Labour should pick an ethnic minority mayoral candidate, the Hackney MP, wrote in the Evening Standard that Hodge was "wrong".

 

"Her remarks... about the need for London to have a black or minority-ethnic mayor were well meant. But she is wrong," she wrote.

 

"The most important thing about London’s new mayor will not be skin colour. Probably the most important quality a big-city mayor needs is a willingness to fight for their city."

 

 

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