Rishi Sunak is facing pressure from senior Conservatives to return the £10m given to the party by Frank Hester, amid increasing disquiet over the donor’s comments about Diane Abbott, which have been widely condemned as racist and misogynistic.
As a series of Tories broke ranks to call for the donation to be returned, Sunak said in the House of Commons that Hester had apologised for his remarks “and that remorse should be accepted”.
But Keir Starmer condemned the prime minister for having “shrunk at the first challenge” in his self-stated mission to combat extremism, and the decision to keep the £10m was also questioned by Andy Street, the Tory West Midlands mayor, and the Scottish Conservatives.
Other Conservatives have expressed private concerns about Sunak’s position, with one senior backbencher contacting party whips to make plain their view that the money should be handed back.
On Monday, the Guardian revealed that Hester had told a 2019 meeting that seeing Abbott made you “want to hate all black women” and that the MP “should be shot”. The controversy was exacerbated by the 24 hour-plus delay in Downing Street saying that Hester had been racist. Sunak now risks being dogged by repeated questions about the money.
While No 10 is desperate not to lose what would be a sizeable chunk of the Conservatives’ election war chest, there are growing concerns within the party that this stance may not be sustainable.
Street was the first senior Tory to call for the £10m to be returned, telling BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “I would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back.”
Chris Patten, the Tory peer and a former cabinet minister under John Major and Margaret Thatcher, said there appeared to be no other course of action. “If he’s made remarks which are racist, how can you in a reasonable way take 10 million smackers of his money?” Patten told Times Radio. “It seems to me that it’s pretty open and shut, as people like Andy Street and others have said. So I think the sooner this is brought to an end the better.”
Sayeeda Warsi, another Tory peer and a former party chair, said: “Elections fought on the money of donors who make racist and offensive statements makes for dangerous election campaigns.”
In a statement, the Scottish Conservatives called the comments “racist and wrong”, saying the UK party “should carefully review the donations it has received from Hester in response to his remarks”.
During a noisy prime minister’s questions, Sunak argued that Hester’s apology should be the end of the matter, and sought to make parallels with Labour actions such as Starmer representing the Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir when he was a lawyer.
The Labour leader asked Sunak if he was “proud to be bankrolled by someone using racist and misogynist language”, and contrasted the PM’s inaction over the donation with his recent speech on combating extremism.
“He chose to anoint himself as the great healer, to pose as some kind of unifier,” Starmer said. “But when the man bankrolling his election says the member for Hackney North [Abbott] should be shot, he suddenly finds himself tongue-tied, shrinking in sophistry, hoping he can deflect for long enough that it will all go away.”
Lee Anderson, who defected to Reform UK on Monday after losing the Tory whip, told GB News that the public would want “consistency”.
He said: “I left the party, had the whip taken off me. I refused to apologise. I stood on a principle that I will not apologise and go back to the party – because we’ve seen inconsistencies again with this donor.
“Ten million quid is good for the party, fair enough, but you’ve got to be consistent, because if you’re not consistent, then people don’t trust you until you’ve been consistent.”
Challenged about Hester’s comments in an appearance before the Treasury select committee, the chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, argued it would be wrong for Hester to be “cancelled” for comments he had subsequently apologised for.
Asked by the Labour MP Angela Eagle whether the Conservatives would hand the money back, Hunt said: “I don’t believe that someone should be cancelled for a comment they made in the past and for which they have apologised. That does not make the comments any less despicable and I don’t defend them.”
When Eagle put it to him that there were “no consequences if you’re rich”, Hunt said: “I think the consequences, in terms of public shaming, of what he’s done have been pretty significant, actually.”
A poll conducted on Tuesday for the campaign group 38 Degrees found that more than 60% of people agreed that “mainstream political parties should not accept donations from people who are found to have made racist or offensive remarks”.
Abbott, Britain’s longest-serving black MP, who sits as an independent after losing the Labour whip for allegedly playing down the extent of racism faced by Jewish people, repeatedly sought to ask her own question to Sunak at PMQs, but was not called by the speaker, Lindsay Hoyle, prompting groans in the Commons.
After the publication of Hester’s remarks earlier this week, a statement from his company, TPP, said he “accepts that he was rude about Diane Abbott in a private meeting several years ago but his criticism had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin”. The statement said Hester abhorred racism, “not least because he experienced it as the child of Irish immigrants in the 1970s”.
The statement added: “He rang Diane Abbott twice [on Monday] to try to apologise directly for the hurt he has caused her, and is deeply sorry for his remarks. He wishes to make it clear that he regards racism as a poison which has no place in public life.”
