Diane Abbott

"Ireland is our struggle. Every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed."

"You have to start from an understanding that all white people are racist."

"Ever since my colleagues and I have been in the house, there have been a series of incidents that give rise to concern. Our visitors are sometimes treated less than politely and deliberately misled … Visitors and we ourselves have been jostled. We have been challenged by attendants as to our identity in an unsubtle attempt to embarrass us. These occurrences are too frequent and have been going on for too long."

"Being an MP is the sort of job all working-class parents want for their children — clean, indoors and no heavy lifting."

"I am surprised that they chose to bring in blonde, blue-eyed girls from Finland, instead of nurses from the Caribbean who know the language and understand British culture and institutions. [...] Are Finnish girls, who may never have met a black person before, let alone touched one, best suited to nurse in multicultural Hackney?"

"On balance Mao did more good than harm."

"I’m a West Indian mum and West Indian mums will go to the wall for their children."

"I think the public sector cuts have the potential to set back race relations and black and ethnic minority communities by a generation."

"White people love playing ‘divide & rule’. We should not play their game."

"I put being a mother ahead of being a politician."

"Of course, sex is great. We don't have to pretend otherwise. But people shouldn't feel victimised by a pornified culture and girls shouldn't be forced to do things they don't feel comfortable with."

"There is a crisis of masculinity in Britain because of the pressures rapid economic and social change have placed on masculine identity. A generation of men are in transit and unclear of their social role. They are also under pressure to live up to pornified ideals."

"If you want people to participate and be interested, part of that is to have a political class that looks like the population as a whole."

"When I had been at primary school, I was very good at writing essays. It was a big thing. My essays were so good they would get pinned up on the wall and read out to the rest of the class"

"I want power. I suppose that's the story of my life - seeking power."

"I'm in politics to be a voice for people who don't have a voice."

"There's no question women politicians get a level of abuse online which men don't get. New media and the anonymity has unleashed a really quite violent misogyny which I didn't see when I started in politics, although consistently women always get more severe abuse in the media than men."

"I respect the result of the referendum and no-one wanted to thwart it in a perverse kind of way. But we need to be clear, this is not a Tony Benn Brexit, this is Donald Trump Brexit, and it's got a very ugly side."

"I receive racist and sexist abuse online on a daily basis. I have had rape threats, death threats, and am referred to routinely as a bitch and/or nigger, and am sent horrible images on Twitter"

"Sexism towards female MPs is sadly still commonplace"

"I do know my figures"

"I think politicians complaining about the media is like sailors complaining about the weather."

"I think that's what we were referencing when we talked about easy movement [of workers after the UK has left the EU's single market] - less bureaucracy; it's good for migrants but it's also good for business"

"The health service, they're very worried about a collapse in the number of EU migrants coming here. Social care would be in a terrible position.... finance, education. The reality is that business, the CBI, the Institute of Directors, but also health, education and social care; they say that they need these European migrants and we have to listen to them."

"I will argue for the right of the electorate to vote on any deal that is finally agreed."

"The Labour Party doesn't support a second referendum"

"We don't want to see the break-up of families from the EU in the way we currently do for non-EU families."

"In a global world, we need migration and migrants. They should not be subjected to a hostile environment."

"The disproportionate use of force is clearly discriminatory. This is not a recipe for good police-community relations."

"Migrants from outside the EU should be treated with the same fairness as EU migrants after Brexit."

"The referendum vote will be honoured and we will come out of the EU next spring"

"[We will table an amendment to reject the deal and] prevent the chaos of the UK crashing out of the EU"

"I hope ex-members will continue to work with Labour on issues like homelessness, the benefit system, the NHS and most of all fighting this Tory Brexit"

"The British people and British workers are paying a big price for chaotic Brexit"

"Another vote would be the democratic thing to do to move Brexit forward."

"[Remaining in the EU would be the] best option for the country and my constituents"

"Numbers are a polite way of expressing hostility to migration as a whole."

"To counter her argument that the "prejudice" experienced by Irish, Jewish and Traveller people is not a patch on the "racism" suffered by black people, I cannot improve on the letter from someone whose family left a city in Poland where more than 99% of Jews were exterminated for their race and whose experiences of British antisemitism includes having Nazi insignia brandished in their face. As the anonymous writer says: "To compare those experiences to the struggles of redheads is incomprehensible." Quite."

"Compare the blond Etonian [Boris Johnson] to Britain’s first black woman MP, and you see how racist and sexist 21st-century century Britain remains. No matter how great the sin, how brazen the deceit, how lethally complacent the politician, he gets to come back again and again, and fills his pockets while doing so. Abbott can't even enjoy an M&S mojito on the tube without it becoming a major scandal. She has faced racial bullying – including from within her own party – that would have broken others. Little of that is remembered, and none of it helps."

"Thanks Diane. I hope we can all agree that this debate should be about Syria not UK party politics"

"You're shadow international development secretary not an internet troll."