Time for Tories to move on – out of government

✒ RECENTLY Rishi Sunak stood in Downing Street and said: “We have seen a shocking rise in extremism, disruption and criminality”. He talked of the descent “into intimidation, threats and planned acts of violence”.

It has now been reported that the Tory party’s biggest donor, Frank Hester, stated that an MP “should be shot”. He continued that seeing her on TV meant “you just want to hate all black women because she’s there”.

Twenty-four hours after that report, astonishingly, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Mel Stride said: “I think the critical point here is I don’t think what he was saying was a gender-based or race-based comment”. The comments were “clearly inappropriate” but people should “move on”. After a further eight hours, and following intense media pressure and justifiable outrage by the general public, a spokesperson for Number 10 admitted the comments were indeed racist. Patently, not only were the comments racist and misogynistic but, following the murders of MPs Jo Cox and Sir David Amess, immensely dangerous.

It has been revealed that over the past year Frank Hester has donated a staggering £15 million to the Conservative

Party. This almost equates with the sum of money spent by the Tories at the last general election. We now know where their funding for the general election later this year will come from: someone who makes racist and sexist remarks and is happy to express the desire to kill an MP. To paraphrase Mel Stride’s remarks, is it not now time for the whole Conservative Party to “move on”?

Mike Baldwin

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