All posts tagged: Hester

Police investigate Tory donor Frank Hester over ‘racist’ comments

Police investigate Tory donor Frank Hester over ‘racist’ comments

Rishi Sunak should challenge his Tory leadership critics to “put up or shut up”, George Osborne said.  The former chancellor said he believed voters would appreciate Mr Sunak showing a “flash of steel” to his rivals amid speculation he could face a potential challenge.  Mr Osborne told his Political Currency podcast: “[Sunak] is so worried about reigniting the Tory civil war… he’s allowed the civil war to be ignited without necessarily taking a strong position in it.  “I think it’d be very much to his credit to say, ‘look, there are some people in the party that don’t like what I’m doing, don’t like the way I’m leading it, fine, but I’ll tell you what, the way I’m doing it is moral, it’s economically competent, it’s going to deliver the results for Britain’. “And if they don’t like it, they can either put up or shut up.  And I think people would like a bit of a flash of steel.” Source link

Minister: Frank Hester Row ‘Wasn’t Really About Diane Abbott’

Minister: Frank Hester Row ‘Wasn’t Really About Diane Abbott’

Kemi Badenoch has claimed top Tory donor Frank Hester’s alleged comments about Diane Abbott “weren’t even really about Diane Abbott”. According to The Guardian, Hester said back in 2019 that Abbott made him “want to hate all Black women” and that she “should be shot”. Badenoch, the business secretary, was the first member of the government to publicly call Hester’s reported remarks racist, before even Rishi Sunak did so. But, on Monday she told LBC the Conservatives should still not give back the £10 million Hester donated last year. Speaking to LBC host Nick Ferrari, she said: “I’m actually quite surprised people suggest this. “This is something he said five years ago, he wasn’t talking to Diane Abbott, it wasn’t even really about Diane Abbott, he used her in a reference which was completely unacceptable. “He has apologised for it.” Hester’s company TTP said in a statement that Hester “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 …

Frank Hester’s TPP employed Conservative peer as trade envoy in 2016 | Frank Hester

Frank Hester’s TPP employed Conservative peer as trade envoy in 2016 | Frank Hester

The company run by the Tory donor Frank Hester, whose remarks about Diane Abbott have been widely condemned as racist, paid a Conservative peer £148,000 to act as a trade envoy, the Guardian can reveal, as evidence of his links to the party deepen. Zahida Manzoor, a former deputy chair of the Commission for Racial Equality in the 1990s who went on to be a Lords whip under Theresa May’s government, took on the part-time role as chair of a Middle East advisory council for Hester’s health tech TPP in September 2016. The £12,300-a-month role, which ended in September 2017, shows that Hester’s ties to the Conservatives go back longer than previously thought. Lady Manzoor confirmed the role at the Phoenix Partnership (TPP) and pointed out that it was declared in the register of members’ interests at the time. She joined the widespread condemnation of the Hester’s remarks last week, and told the Guardian she did not witness any racism when working for TPP. Hester has donated £10m to the party in the last year, …

Hester row and Anderson defection have left Sunak weaker than ever | Conservatives

Hester row and Anderson defection have left Sunak weaker than ever | Conservatives

On the fringes of cabinet last Tuesday ministers chatted in hushed tones about the Tory mega-donor Frank Hester’s “clearly racist” remarks about Diane Abbott, revealed by the Guardian the previous night, but concluded that “we’ve got to get the money in”. It took No 10 until the end of the day to condemn his words as “racist and wrong” – 24 hours after the original story broke – while Sunak himself didn’t comment until prime minister’s questions the next day. “It went on too long,” admits one cabinet minister. Downing Street’s handling of the row had uncomfortable echoes of the dying days of Boris Johnson’s premiership for some Tory MPs, with the instinctive reaction to double down and tough it out rather than facing up to the inevitable consequences. It was not the only difficult moment for Sunak, in what was one of the most troubled weeks since he become prime minister, and which followed a budget that failed to deliver any shift in the polls. The former Tory deputy chair Lee Anderson defected to …

Cabbies have given me some great lines, but they have nothing on Frank Hester | Stewart Lee

Cabbies have given me some great lines, but they have nothing on Frank Hester | Stewart Lee

I am often accused of fabricating false taxi drivers, to create straw-man mouthpieces to embody easily satirised counter-arguments that I want to kick to death in my standup comedy, from the lofty position of a patronising north London liberal elitist with his own column in the Observer. But there’s no need to invent them. My classic “You can prove anything with facts” line, now much beloved by liberal talk radio hosts, was in fact uttered by a driver near the Shepherd’s Bush roundabout on a summer Sunday morning in 1999, while the interminable “If you say you’re English these days you get arrested and thrown in jail” riff was gifted to me by a cross cabman somewhere between Balls Pond Road and Newington Green in the winter of 2013. The routines were already out there, like Messiaen’s birdsong. All I had to do was listen. But the past few years have seen slimmer pickings for monetisable reactionary remarks. The average angry person has become more guarded, but the lack of censure of commonsense avatars such …

Rishi Sunak’s refusal to give up the Frank Hester gold proves his principles have a price point | Andrew Rawnsley

Rishi Sunak’s refusal to give up the Frank Hester gold proves his principles have a price point | Andrew Rawnsley

It has been such an atrocious six days for Rishi Sunak that his most lowering point was not Lee Anderson, the gargoyle the prime minister appointed as deputy Tory chair, giving him the finger by declaring that he was jumping ship to the Faragiste Reform party. The destabilisation of the Tory leader by that nasty defector has been trumped by Mr Sunak’s abysmal absence of judgment over Frank Hester, his noxious donor. This is far from the first time in British politics that a prime minister has been engulfed in trouble because of his links with a moneybags. The test of leadership is how it is dealt with. Faced with Mr Hester’s disgusting remarks about one of our most prominent black politicians, the Tory leader utterly failed the test by initially refusing to denounce the donor’s comments as racist and setting his face against relinquishing the cash he has poured into the Conservative treasure chest. Whenever a monster scandal breaks, Number 10 issues instructions to ministers about “the line to take” when they are put up in …

Revealed: Sunak flown to Leeds for private tour of Frank Hester’s office weeks after £5m donation | Frank Hester

Revealed: Sunak flown to Leeds for private tour of Frank Hester’s office weeks after £5m donation | Frank Hester

Rishi Sunak was flown to Leeds by Frank Hester for a private tour of the businessman’s offices on the day after the autumn statement last year, raising questions about the access afforded to the £10m donor bankrolling the Tories’ election campaign. Sunak’s relationship with Hester is under the spotlight after a Guardian investigation revealed on Monday that the mega-donor made comments about Diane Abbott which have been widely condemned for being racist and misogynistic. Sunak initially declined to comment on Hester’s 2019 remarks that looking at Diane Abbott makes you “want to hate all black women” and that the MP “should be shot”. But after an outcry, the prime minister’s spokesperson said the comments were “racist and wrong”. It has now emerged that the prime minister visited Hester’s healthcare IT company in north-west Leeds on 23 November, with the £16,000 of travel costs by helicopter met by the businessman. The trip was made roughly three weeks after Hester’s company, the Phoenix Partnership (TPP), gave a second £5m tranche to the Conservatives last November. Hester himself …

Sunak under pressure to say how many times he has met Tory donor Frank Hester | Rishi Sunak

Sunak under pressure to say how many times he has met Tory donor Frank Hester | Rishi Sunak

Rishi Sunak is facing calls to say how many times he has met the Conservative mega-donor Frank Hester, who made comments about Diane Abbott that have been widely condemned for being racist and misogynistic, after a picture of the pair at a Tory fundraiser emerged. Hester is understood to have attended two Tory fundraisers in the last year, in June where he was photographed with Sunak, and as recently as two weeks ago at Raffles in London. The prime minister is also believed to have met Hester in Leeds, the day after the autumn statement in November, when the donor paid £16,000 for Sunak to take a helicopter to the city for a political visit. No 10 has said it “will not get into details” about whether the two men had a meeting during that trip. On that day, Sunak was pictured hammering jewellery at a workshop in Farsley in north-west Leeds, less than 4 miles from the HQ of Hester’s company TPP. Downing Street is also refusing to give details of any discussions about …

BBC Question Time: Tories Slammed For Accepting Hester Donations

BBC Question Time: Tories Slammed For Accepting Hester Donations

Broadcaster Ayesha Hazarika suggested the Conservatives’ lacklustre response to the row around donor Frank Hester was akin to a “blank cheque for racism” on BBC Question Time last night. Hester – who donated £10 million to the Conservative Party last year – is facing intense an backlash after the Guardian reported he once said MP Diane Abbott “made him want to hate all Black women” and “should be shot”. The Tories have not handed back the money, despite growing pressure to do so. It also emerged yesterday that Hester has given the party another £5m which has yet to be declared. Directing her anger at fellow panellist Lee Rowley, the minister for housing, Hazarika said: “This guy is a disgusting racist, he is bankrolling the Conservative Party – will you give that money back?” A huge round of applause broke out at that. Hazarika also slammed the government’s defence of Hester, saying: “When you say he apologised, he did not even recognise his abhorrent, frightening racism. “He said he had just been a bit rude …