Diane Abbott - a half-remembered gaffe

Grant in a comment below said

'Years ago when the lovely, but racist, Diane made racist remarks about blonde Finnish nurses, someone in the Daily Telegraph wrote a poem which included the line:-

" Diane Abbott
with her rabbit, rabbit, rabbit ".

She gets my vote anytime. Labour need a heavyweight intellectual like her as leader !'

I will admit that was a half-remembered event so I had to Wikipedia it and this is what I found:

'In 1996 Abbott was accused of racism when she suggested that "blonde, blue-eyed Finnish girls" in her local hospital in West London were unsuitable as nurses because they "may never have met a black person before". Ms Abbott's comments were supported by Bernie Grant, a fellow black MP whose constituency, Tottenham, borders hers. "She is quite right," he said. "Bringing someone here from Finland who has never seen a black person before and expecting them to have some empathy with black people is nonsense." Conservative MP Ian Bruce stated that he had "never heard such racist rubbish from a Member of Parliament in recent years". Abbott was also accused of ignorance by the Anti-Racist Alliance executive member Marc Wadsworth, who is half-Finnish, pointed out that at that time the Miss Finland, Lola Odusoga, was black, of Nigerian and Finnish descent. "She's a black Finn like me," he said. Abbott apologized for her remarks and said her main priority was to ensure that her constituents received medical treatment from the very best people "irrespective of race".'

I have no idea whether Diane Abbott is a racist, but that remark was somewhat questionable to say the least.