Tory donor's alleged Diane Abbott remarks were racist, says Kemi Badenoch

[IwantToRetire]

Ms Badenoch becomes the most senior minister to call the alleged comments racist - going further than the official government response.
Downing Street have called Mr Hester's alleged comments "unacceptable" but without specifying why.

Asked repeatedly if Rishi Sunak would describe the words as racist, the prime minister's spokeswoman said she would not get into "further characterisation".

In a social media post, Ms Badenoch, who also serves as the equalities minister, said: "Hester's 2019 comments, as reported, were racist.

"I welcome his apology. Abbott and I disagree on a lot. But the idea of linking criticism of her, to being a black woman is appalling.

"It's never acceptable to conflate someone's views with the colour of their skin."

Earlier, health minister Maria Caulfield told the BBC she considered the comments to be racist and that she would not accept a donation from Mr Hester "if he made those comments".

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-68548389

Who would turn down ten million let alone return it after your have spent it? Not of course saying that anyone has allowed the amount of money their response to the alleged comments.

All the reports use 'allegedly' and 'reportedly'.

The man denies he said them, as far as I can tell.

So, to sum up, a well evidenced major medical scandal involving children goes unreported and the news is taken up with hearsay and speculation without any evidenced basis in fact.

Lovely.

ArabellaScott · Today 15:56

All the reports use 'allegedly' and 'reportedly'.

That's true, but they do do that in these sorts of reports, to avoid court action. I did hope to see that there was a recording; any idea how many people have said they heard him? I can't find anything.

Just shoving "allegedly" in front of a libel doesn't make it immune to action.

This is why it's been a running gag on HIGNFY since it started.

Also newspapers are held to a higher standard than you or I - hence the threshold for libel is much lower.

I return to my wearied point that the gentleman is free to sue if he believes he has suffered reputational harm.

Interestingly the Tory party also isn't suing. Although that may be because they'd rather not let a court of law anywhere near the question of their reputation. They may not get the answer they like.

I don't think people should need to sue for us to agree that if they are playing fast and loose with information like this, it's wrong, and destructive.

Shrug.

Well that's our world and our country.

The bigger picture is that we have now found out that our institutions and conventions have been predicated upon what you might consider reasonable behaviour. They were not designed to cope with a mass of people suddenly deciding they are going to act unreasonably. Ultimately it's how democracy is slowly subverted by the rule of the mob.

I agree we should be concerned by these developments. But since this character is backing the people that made it this way, my sympathies are distinctly muted. The phrase about petards is applicable here. In so many ways.

I've judged I will be long dead before the changes we've seen these past few years begin to recede. That does rather colour my judgement I guess. I may yet have to sew myself into my own funeral shroud.

@ArabellaScott l work in tech in Leeds and Frank Hester is complete notorious. I know quite a few people who worked at TPP and it sounds like an abominable place to work, largely because of the culture that Frank creates.

The reports don't surprise me or any of my colleagues at all. I guess the news reports use the words "allege" so they dont get sued (although Frank would be stupid to sue as it would all come out).

Check out the Glassdoor reviews for TPP (the Phoenix Partnership). Yes it's anonymous, but I think you'd be hard pressed to not get a fair impression of him from it.

What I can't believe is that it's taken this long to come out given how much he donates, and that the Conservatives don't want to dig deeper into his character. Actually that's a stupid thing to say - of course they don't want to know if it means returning his money!

This tweet was doing the rounds with us at work yesterday. Not that we needed to see it - we've all already read the Glassdoor reviews for entertainment long before this hit the fan.

https://twitter.com/AdamBienkov/status/1767581854742299110?t=1yv_3yGzwPa8kUNdrEgb3g&s=19

The allegedly aspect of this story was discussed earlier on the thread. A lot of political "stories" in the news are based on an unamed source. This story is not different. More relevant is why the source didn't speak up 5 years ago, and assuming this isn't a one off, why the Tories thought he was appropriate to take money from.

However since then it turns out that he has 2 or 3 times tried to phonce Daine Abbott to apologise (he claims that what is being reported isn't "exactly" what he said). Would be a bit weird to apologise for something you never did.

And this is from Diane Abbott herself who found this a further example of his arrogance more than upsetting as she had specifically requested that he did not try to approach her directly. Shows what an self important shit he is to think he could still try.

But maybe even worse is that today this was discussed in the House of Commons and Diane Abbott was there. ie she was sitting there being discussed.

And yet every time she stood indicating she wanted to speak the Speaker ignored her.

Which lead to the bizarre scenes of the leader of the Labour Party, from which she is currently suspended and others, went up to her to show their support or score a point or because they really care?

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/speaker-slammed-not-calling-diane-134336881.html

People have been contacting the papers, well the Guardian, for years. I saw the text of an email sent to the Guardian in 2019. People can speak without being heard.

The bigger question is why it wasn't picked up earlier.

I agree the speaker's ignoring of Abbott was awful.

Two faced buggers the lot of them, how dare the speaker ignore her.

All my sympathies right now are with Diane. It must be so distressing for her and then to crown it all, having to sit there today while people queue up to talk about you but not be allowed to speak herself is intolerable.

It's just the same as Afzhar Ali. The journalist has kept it to cause maximum embarrassment. And in my opinion the "allegedly" stuff is for legal reasons as there could well be some kind of crime at play (e.g. inciting racial hatred or libel).

If you want to praise a Conservative for calling out then Festus Akinbusoye was a lot more unequivocal in what they said.

Plus a previous advisor, I'll have to dig it out but what he wrote was very moving.

Badenoch was weak, took all day to say it was racist but then stuck to the party line of "forgiveness". Not good enough. Especially not from the minister for Equalities.

https://twitter.com/Fest4BedsPCC/status/1767587145261199507

Samuel Kasamu

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/samuel-kasumu-diane-abbott-frank-hester-boris-b2511163.html

"Allegedly" this is how the conversation between Starmer and Abbott went after she was ignored 30 times by the speaker:

Keir Starmer approached Diane Abbott, conversation overheard went like this:
“Let me know if there’s anything I can do”
“You could restore the whip”
“I understand just let me know if there’s anything..”
“Restore the whip”
“I understand”

Yes, the Tories are outrageously racist and sexist – but Labour is guilty too
The Conservative Party’s reluctance to condemn the attacks on me was shocking, if not surprising, writes Diane Abbott.
But Labour has also failed to deal with the racism I’ve experienced at the hands of the party
https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/diane-abbott-racist-sexist-tory-party-donor-frank-hester-labour-starmer-b2512016.html

It cracks me up when they say that this isn't the Tory party they know.
It's exactly the Tory party the rest of us know. They made Lee Anderthal Deputy Chairman FFS.

I do think what he said about her was racist, there was no need to mention her race, but I disagree that the ‘should be shot comment’ was intended to be taken seriously.

“[So and so ] should be shot” is just a common colloquial expression never meant to be taken literally or to incite violence an against someone.

Here is an example from the Cambridge Dictionary:
someone should be shot
idiom informal

said when you think that someone's actions are extremely unreasonable:

someone should be shot for doing something

They should be shot for selling drinks at that price!

He’s had £400M of public money for his shit software off the back of it so it’s not like he’s down on the deal.

If you want to get an insight into the mentality of this absolute ogre have a read of this 3 year old Reddit thread, it’s a beaut: https://www.reddit.com/r/Leeds/comments/plh2qo/job_at_tpp_in_horsforth_is_the_workplace_really/

Maybe.

I think that in many ways the political system would be better off if donations were either non-existent, or really significantly curtailed.

As it is though, I'm somewhat suspicious of limiting which individuals can donate. Not that it should never happen, but party membership and supporting a party is part of our political process, and I'm hesitant to cut people out for ideological reasons, or even for being an asshole. I don't think parties are wrong to have a high bar for that kind of thing, and lots of assholes and bad people do donate to all of the parties.

@TempestTost making it unlawful for a party in government to receive donations from individuals holding government contracts would be a start. I’m not even allowed to buy a customer lunch if they work in the public sector as it could be construed as bribery under the very strict interpretation of the FCPA that my employer works under.

but I disagree that the ‘should be shot comment’ was intended to be taken seriously

That's the whole point. He probably thought he was being hilarious in a blokely sort of way.

But the reality is, even if it is one crackpot, hears something this is being said in public (even in the context of criticism) can make them think this is a justified action.

And again as the man who is advisor to the Tories on racism pointet out, had someone as a "joke" made that remark about somebody Jewish (along with the racism and sexism) everybody would have been outraged.

As it is women MPs get a far higher rate of really threatening messages.

And local London news was in north Hackney where Diane Abbott is still MP, and without being invited to comment local, Black women were saying how scared it made them feel.

I would like to think there isn't a real threat of violence, but quite honestly with the Government going on about extremism and and potential threats, for some people it is almost like encouragement.

As happened when Suella Braverman made comments about the Ceasefire March would be threatening the Cenotaph ceremony (untrue as they had agreed a route with the police well away from there). But this was like an invitation to the NF or whatever they call themselves. They turned out, didn't find any threatening peaceniks to started brawling with, so starting picking fights with other people.

MPs have been attacked and killed whilst doing constituency business.

It doesn't matter if it was intended as a "joke" it was totally irresponsible. In fact some parts of the media have not included that part of this gross speech, presumably thinking it doesn't need to be shared and dont want to be part of what could be seen as permission to carry out an horrific act of violence.

(edited for horrendous typos)