Diane Abbott has spoken of her struggle to control her Type 2 diabetes during the recent General Election campaign.
In an interview with the Guardian, the Shadow Home Secretary revealed she was diagnosed with the condition for two years ago.
Ms Abbott said the condition was “out of control” during the campaign, when she had been widely criticised for some poor interview performances.
She said: “During the election campaign, everything went crazy – and the diabetes was out of control, the blood sugar was out of control.”
The Hackney North MP said her brother had watched and listened to interviews she gave during the campaign, including the grilling from Nick Ferrari figures on one of Labour’s key policy pledges, and got in touch with her.
She said: “He said ‘that is not Diane’, because ever since I’ve been a child I’ve had a great memory for figures, and he said he knew it was my blood sugar and gave me a lecture about eating and having glucose tablets.
“It is a condition you can manage. I am doing that now and I feel ready to get back to work.”
But Ms Abbott said she had been touched by thousands of messages of support after she took a break from the campaign, and added Jeremy Corbyn had led a hugely positive campaign which stripped Theresa May of her parliamentary majority last week.
She said: “There was a sense in this campaign nationally that whether you were a Ukip voter concerned about immigration, or whether you were a young professional in Hackney worried about Brexit, in the end, faced with the Tory campaign, you came home.”
The 63-year-old castigated the Tory campaign, and said she felt she had been subject to a “vortex” of targeted attacks at the direction of the Prime Minister and Lynton Crosby, the Conservatives’ chief strategist.
She said: “Clearly I was part of Lynton Crosby’s grid.
“The first time I became aware that I was a target of a national campaign was when people in marginals in the north were WhatsApping me to say there were ad vans talking about me, with a picture of me and Jeremy on.
