LEFT MP Diane Abbott insisted today that it is time Labour stepped up to challenge racism amid the ongoing row over top Tory donor Frank Hester’s racist attack on her.

The row deepened after Communities Secretary Michael Gove, while allowing that Mr Hester’s remarks were “horrific,” said they did not fall within a new definition of extremism he was launching.

This is despite Mr Hester, who has given the Tories £10 million over the last year, also suggesting Ms Abbott should be “shot.”

Ms Abbott has been suspended from the Parliamentary Labour Party whip for the last 11 months while an investigation into a brief letter she wrote continues.

She wrote in The Guardian that “it will be important for the Labour Party to step up to challenge racism, even if it costs us a few points in the polls.”

Britain’s first black woman MP added that while the Labour leader had spoken to her after Prime Ministers’ Questions (PMQs) on Wednesday, during which Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle declined to let her intervene, “the people around him are digging in against any suggestion that I should have the whip restored.

“It will be both sad and strange if Starmer throws Britain’s first black woman MP out of the Parliamentary Labour Party because of an eight-line letter, for which I immediately apologised,” Ms Abbott wrote.

Warning of a desperate government trying to stoke racism for political advantage, she added that “the only card the Tories have left to play is the race card, and they are going to play it ruthlessly.”

She also pointed out that Mr Hester’s comments were broadly of a piece with vile attacks made on her by senior Labour staffers in 2016-17, as revealed in a leaked report into the party’s handling of anti-semitism complaints.

“To this day none of the individuals concerned have apologised to me and the Labour party has not apologised to me personally,” she wrote.

As for Mr Hester, Mr Gove, doubtless thinking of the £10m cheque nestling in the Conservative Treasury, recommended “Christian forgiveness.”

The Communities Secretary said: “We’re looking at organisations with a particular ideology. The individual concerned said something that was horrific.

“I wouldn’t want to conflate those motivated by extremist ideology with an individual comment, however horrific, which has quite rightly been called out and which has quite rightly led to an apology.”