Diane Abbott has hit out at the ‘unconscionable’ delay in condemning comments allegedly made by the Conservatives‘ top individual donor about her – as Rishi Sunak resisted calls to hand back the £10million forked out by the backer last year.
The Prime Minister has said the public should accept the apology from healthcare tech boss Frank Hester, who reportedly suggested Britain’s longest-serving black MP ‘should be shot’ and said seeing her made him ‘hate all black women’.
But some of Mr Sunak’s own party, and the Scottish Conservatives, have backed calls from Labour to return the donations made by Mr Hester and his company, Leeds-based The Phoenix Partnership (TPP) over the comments.
Veteran left-wing firebrand Ms Abbott – currently sitting as an independent after being suspended from Labour last year – has criticised both Labour and Tory MPs for their ‘reluctance’ in describing Mr Hester’s alleged comments as racist.
On Wednesday, she said Mr Hester’s alleged comments – said to have been made during a TPP meeting in 2019 – met ‘the textbook definition of racism and sexism’ but claimed her former stablemates and Tories had dithered on calling them out.
Writing in The Independent, Britain’s longest-serving Black MP said: ‘The delay in calling out abuse is unconscionable. It should be absolutely clear that the reported remarks from Frank Hester were both outrageously racist and sexist.’
However, her ire was not reserved for the Tories – calling out top Labour figures for, in her view, seeking to score political points over pointing out the discriminatory nature of the alleged remarks.
She added: ‘A number of Labour statements were issued, and interviews given where neither word was mentioned.
‘Instead, the entire focus was on the demand that the Tories give Hester back his money, which is surely not the primary point in this case.’
Labour sources have insisted the party was quick to call out the remarks as racist and sexist.
Labour’s calls for Mr Sunak to return the money were yesterday backed by the Scottish Conservatives and West Midlands Tory mayor Andy Street.
Mr Street told told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back.’
The Scottish Conservatives also called for the cash to be returned, describing Hester’s alleged comments as ‘racist and wrong’.
A spokesperson added: ‘The Scottish Conservative Party has never accepted a donation from Frank Hester and the UK Conservative Party should carefully review the donations it has received from Hester in response to his remarks.’
But the PM rejected the demand, telling MPs that Mr Hester’s ‘remorse should be accepted’.
Business minister Kevin Hollinrake meanwhile suggested the Tories would accept another £10million donation from Mr Hester despite the furore.
He told the BBC: ‘If Mr Hester was a racist, if he refused to apologise for what he’d said, that would be different. He’s apologised. I don’t believe he’s a racist.’
Mr Hester was reported on Tuesday night to have told staff at another TPP meeting in 2019 that he made ‘a lot of jokes about racism’.
The Guardian reported allegations he made jokes about Indians climbing onto roofs of trains, and that ahead of a business trip to Malaysia he said: ‘Im looking forward to going to Malaysia, so that I can make new jokes – I don’t know any jokes about Malaysian people but I’m sure we’ll find them.’
Ahead of that article being published, Mr Hester posted on X, formerly Twitter, that he believed ‘racism…is a poison that has no place in public life’.
Conservative sources declined to comment on speculation that the party has already accepted further large donations from Mr Hester, saying only that all donations would be published in due course by the Electoral Commission.
During angry clashes in the Commons on Wednesday, the Prime Minister accused Sir Keir Starmer of hypocrisy for failing to deal with controversial comments made by senior Labour figures and donors.
And after yesterday’s Prime Minister’s Questions, Ms Abbott accused the Commons Speaker of failing democracy by not allowing her to speak during the debate.
She also confirmed, via social media, that she had a discussion with Sir Keir about restoring the Labour whip after it was suspended last April.
Ms Abbott has been sitting as an independent since writing to The Observer to suggest Jewish, Irish and Traveller people were not subject to racism ‘all their lives’ in the same way as black people.
Mr Starmer is reported to have said: ‘Let me know if there’s anything I can do’ – to which Ms Abbott says she replied: ‘You could restore the whip.’
During the session, the Prime Minister said Mr Hester’s comments ‘were wrong and they were racist’, adding: ‘He has rightly apologised for them and that remorse should be accepted. There is no place for racism in Britain, and the Government that I lead is living proof of that.’
Sir Keir urged Mr Sunak to hand back the donation, saying: ‘How low would he have to sink, what racist, woman-hating threats of violence would he have to make before the Prime Minister plucked up the courage to hand back the £10million he has taken from him?’
Mr Sunak replied: ‘I am absolutely not going to take any lectures from somebody who chose to represent an anti-Semitic terrorist group, Hizb ut-Tahrir, and who chose to serve a leader who let anti-Semitism run riot in this Labour Party.
‘Those are his actions, those are his values and that’s how he should be judged.’
His comments were a reference to Sir Keir leading a team of lawyers in 2008 who acted on behalf of Hizb ut-Tahrir, now a proscribed terror group in Britain, when the group tried to overturn a ban on their activities in Germany.
The Labour leader’s spokesman later said Sir Keir did not represent the organisation in court and that, as a lawyer, he ‘had to represent people whose views he doesn’t agree with’.
Downing Street drew attention to comments by prominent Labour donor Dale Vince who appeared to suggest that Hamas were ‘freedom fighters’ just days after the October 7 attacks on Israel.
In an interview with Times Radio, Mr Vince, who has given Labour £2.5million, insisted he ‘didn’t support what they did’, but said: ‘One man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist. That’s how it works.’
In a statement on Tuesday, Mr Hester said he was ‘deeply sorry’ for his ‘rude’ remarks, but insisted they ‘had nothing to do with [Ms Abbott’s] gender nor colour of skin‘.
He has not responded to a request for comment from MailOnline.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/articles.rss
Jon Brady
