The government is under pressure to return a 10 million pound donation from business executive Frank Hester after racist comments aimed at Diane Abbott were unearthed this week.
Hester, chief executive of healthcare software firm The Phoenix Partnership, reportedly said in a 2019 company meeting that Abbott, Britain’s longest-serving Black legislator, “should be shot” and made him “want to hate all Black women”.
The Conservative Party’s biggest donor, Hester’s company has been paid more than 400 million pounds ($510 million) by the National Health Service and other government bodies since 2016.
After the comments were published by The Guardian newspaper, Hester acknowledged that he’d been “rude about Diane Abbott” but denied being racist.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak initially criticized Hester’s comments as “unacceptable,” but it took almost 24 hours for him to call the remarks racist.
Business Minister Kevin Hollinrake told broadcasters on Wednesday that the party would not give back the money, telling Sky News that “clearly” the comments were racist, but that it was right to keep the donation because Hester “is not a racist, and he has apologized for what he said.”
But Andy Street, the Conservative mayor of England’s West Midlands region, told BBC radio that if it were up to him, “I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back.”
As Britain’s political parties are trying to build up funds for election campaigns later this year, should the Tories return the sum donated by Hester?
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