Who's afraid of Diane Abbott?

So Corbyn's new Shadow Cabinet has been announced and Diane Abbott is now Shadow Home Secretary.

This is, on any sensible reckoning, a good thing. Leaving aside, although we shouldn't, the fact that two of the three senior offices of state are now shadowed by women, Diane is an asset to the Labour Party. Articulate, and sometimes masterly in her parliamentary interventions, she has been a consistent voice against racism and in favour of immigrants' rights more generally. This record matters now more than ever. A disgracefully xenophobic government is trampling on the victories of recent decades in its attacks on migrants, overseas students, and even non-UK nationals working as government advisors. It is shameful that the PLP's prioritising of attacking Corbyn over exploiting Tory divisions allowed May to respond to the referendum result in this way. But given that it did, Abbott is the person to respond.

Yet she gets ridicule of a sort not thrown at any other politician from one of the main parties. Leaving aside the dregs of the internet, who are fond of accusing her of 'racism against white people', as though that were a thing, people who fancy themselves as political commentators don't take well to her. "Even you can't take this seriously": a dyed-in-the-wool liberal complained about the appointment on a friend's Facebook wall.

The left joins in its own way. I don't mean the kind of socially and humanly challenged leftist who can't get their head round the idea that Abbott might be friendly with the odd Tory. I mean the way her undoubted mistakes are remembered and regurgitated in a manner that is not the case with any other Labour MP. Reformist politicians will be reformist politicians: perfection is too high a bar to set. Disappointment is inevitable this side of the end of capitalism. You need to go for the best of the bunch, and Abbott is amongst them. Yet people who seem to understand this in the case of other figures - including much, much, more problematic ones (Ken Livingstone, for instance) - seem uncomprehending in the case of Diane.

What is it about Diane that attracts this, in a way that so many of her colleagues don't? I'm stumped.

Anyway, here's a picture of Diane Abbott: