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Frank Hester, who has given 10 million pounds ($12.8 million) to
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's party in the last year, has issued
an apology after the Guardian newspaper reported he said that
looking at the country's longest-serving Black lawmaker made him
"want to hate all Black women", and that she "should be shot".
Hester said the 2019 comments about Diane Abbott were rude but
had nothing to do with her gender nor her skin color.
After originally declining to pass judgment on the comments,
Sunak's spokesperson eventually called them "racist and wrong"
and opposition parties said the Conservatives should return
Hester's donations.
However, junior business minister Kevin Hollinrake said Hester
had apologized and was not necessarily a racist person, so the
party didn't need to return the money.
Asked if the Conservatives would accept another 10 million
pounds from Hester, Hollinrake told BBC TV: "On the basis that
we don't believe Mr Hester is a racist, yes."
Hester has said he abhorred racism.
The furor has plunged the Conservatives into another internal
conflict over racism. The party's former deputy chairman, Lee
Anderson, was suspended after he refused to apologize for saying
London's first Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, was under the control
of Islamists.
Conservative lawmakers repeatedly said those comments were wrong
but declined to say why, or say if they were Islamophobic and
Anderson has since defected to the small right-wing Reform UK
party.
"Zero tolerance on racism is just a slogan in today's politics,"
Nus Ghani, another junior business minister said on X, formerly
known as Twitter.
(Reporting by Alistair Smout; editing by Michael Holden)
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