Diane Abbott is one of the most prominent left-wing politicians in Britain. A lifelong socialist campaigner, she became the first black woman elected to the House of Commons when she won a seat in Hackney North and Stoke Newington in 1983. She would go on to be a left-wing critic of various Labour leaders as the party drifted rightward through the 1990s and early 2000s, most notably as a vocal opponent of the war in Iraq under Tony Blair.

In 2010 she stood unsuccessfully for leadership of the Labour Party before joining the Shadow Cabinet for the first time under Ed Miliband, in a Public Health brief which saw her make impassioned defenses of abortion rights during attempts by the Tory government to curtail them. But it was in 2015 that Diane Abbott really ascended to power in the Labour Party, as one of Jeremy Corbyn’s earliest supporters she was instrumental in his front bench team, first taking the position of Shadow Secretary of State for International Development before moving on to Health and then, in 2016, to Shadow Home Secretary, the third-ranking position in the Shadow Cabinet.

In her role as Home Secretary, Diane Abbott has been one of Labour’s most prominent spokespeople on migration. She recently made a series of speeches intended to chart the party’s vision for progressive migration policy after Brexit. For some British leftists wedded to the freedom of movement provided by membership of the EU, positive talk on the issue of migration after Brexit is seen as a paradox. But Abbott is more hopeful. A life spent engaging in political struggle has helped shape her conviction that Labour can win the progressive case on migration. She spoke to Lewis Bassett about her life on the Left, the migration debate in Britain, and her hopes for the Corbyn project.