Race row donor may have given extra £5m

The Conservative tycoon who made alleged racist remarks about Diane Abbott has given an extra £5m to the party which has not yet been declared, it has been reported.

Rishi Sunak has continued to resist pressure to give up the donations from Frank Hester (inset), which amounted to more than £10m last year.

News website Tortoise reported that he has given an extra £5m since the last set of Electoral Commission data on donations was published.

A Conservative Party spokesperson refused to confirm or deny the claim, saying: “Declarable donations will be published by the Electoral Commission in the usual way.”

Asked whether he would reconsider keeping the money, the Prime Minister said yesterday: “What he said was wrong and racist. I made that clear. And it’s right that he’s apologised for that. And where remorse is shown, I think that should be accepted.

“When someone has expressed genuine remorse or contrition for what they’ve done, which he has, it’s the right thing to do to accept that.” Sayeeda Warsi, a former Tory party chair, also demanded that the donation be returned, telling Times Radio: “They’ve got to give the money back. You don’t build election campaigns and you don’t build political parties on the back of money where an individual has these views. “I mean, in my view, if any election that is built upon money, which in itself is based upon kind of these divisive, toxic views, it’s going to lead to divisive, toxic election campaigns. And I know that the party has more than enough money to be able to give back this £10m donation. We should give it back.”

Mr Hester’s £10m gift represented more than a fifth of all the donations declared by the Conservative Party last year, according to i analysis of Electoral Commission figures.

He apologised for being “rude” to Ms Abbott having joked in comments from 2019, published this week by The Guardian, that she made him want to hate all black women.

Sir Keir Starmer told LBC: “There’s only one answer to returning that money. It’s a test for Rishi Sunak. He’s failing that test. And if this report is true, I think it raises serious questions about what his real motivation is in clinging on to that money in the current environment.”

Has there ever been a story that has made you more nauseous about the state of British public life than the saga of Frank Hester, Diane Abbott, the 10 million quid and the Conservative Party’s desperate attempt to keep his cash?

There is so much that is unpleasant here that this may represent the nadir of our politics.

More than anything, it exposes the fault line in the way political parties are funded. Who can possibly think, in the light of Hester’s £10m donation, that it’s the right way for the world’s most noble democracy to conduct itself ?

Of course there should be a limit on the size of donations – by any measure, £10m is an obscene amount of money to inject into a system that is supposedly built on fairness of opportunity and equality of voice. And even if Hester wanted nothing more than a seat on Rishi Sunak’s table at the Tories’ summer ball, the vivid impression it gives is that our politics is for sale to the highest bidder.

Not only that, but it’s up for sale to a man whose grotesquely offensive and racist remarks about Abbott

– “She’s the shittest person”, “She’s stupid”, “You see Diane Abbott… you just want to hate all black women”, “I think she should be shot” – are apparently those of a serial offender. According to a Guardian investigation, he has allegedly made “jokes” about Indians and Chinese workers in front of his staff, and his protestations that “racism is a poison… in public life” don’t really mitigate the offence.

There are already enough iniquities in our political settlement – the first-past-the-post system being the most egregious – without the injection of millions from those who seek to influence policy.

And this applies as much to the relationship between the trade unions and the Labour Party as it does to the uber-rich individuals who donate to the Conservatives.

First of all, the Tories can do us all a favour by returning Hester’s money. It would restore some seemliness to this once-grand party.

And then we should bring the matter of political funding back on the public agenda. I know it’s not the most engaging of topics in that it doesn’t really affect people’s daily lives, but it’s now 13 years since it was last investigated in a serious way.

Then, a report from the Committee on Standards in Public Life made a series of sensible recommendations, chief among them a £10,000 limit on individual donations, a 50p levy from taxpayers to fund parties at £3 per vote (at Westminster) and £1.50 per vote (in devolved legislatures), and a limit on campaign spending. They were rejected, with MPs saying the public just wouldn’t wear it.

They were probably right, but that’s because the case has never been made assiduously enough. And when there are bills to pay, it’s hard to get worked up over the feeble state of our political arrangement.

But I’d argue it’s just as important as any matter of public debate, and affects us all in a profound way. Daily life in Britain is miserable enough without having to worry about Frank Hester and what he does with his spare millions.