<\/p>\n
LONDON: UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak resisted growing calls on Wednesday for his Conservative party to return millions of pounds to a major donor accused of making racist comments about a high-profile black lawmaker.<\/p>\n
Businessman Frank Hester, 57, is alleged to have said that Diane Abbott \u2014 Britain\u2019s longest-serving black MP \u2014 made him \u201cwant to hate all black women\u201d and that she \u201cshould be shot\u201d.<\/p>\n
The 2019 comments emerged as Sunak pledged to crack down on extremism, and with increasing concern about the safety of MPs, after two were murdered in recent years and others facing threats and intimidation.<\/p>\n
Sunak \u2014 an Indian-origin Hindu who became the UK\u2019s first prime minister of colour when he entered Downing Street in October 2022 \u2014 took more than 24 hours to condemn the remarks.<\/p>\n
He told parliament on Wednesday that the comments were \u201cracist\u201d and \u201cwrong\u201d but added that Hester had \u201crightly apologised and that remorse should be accepted\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s no place for racism in Britain and the government that I lead is living proof of that,\u201d Sunak added. Hester, CEO of software company The Phoenix Partnership, has donated more than 10 million ($12.8 million) to the Tories and paid 15,000 for Sunak to take a helicopter trip late last year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m pleased that the gentleman is supporting a party that represents one of the most diverse governments in this country\u2019s history led by this country\u2019s first British-Asian prime minister,\u201d said Sunak.<\/p>\n
Keir Starmer, the leader of the main opposition Labour party, said Sunak should find \u201cthe courage\u201d to hand back the 10 million. The prime minister is also coming under pressure from members of his own party over the controversy. \u201cI would think about the company I kept and I would give that money back,\u201d Andy Street, the Conservative Mayor of the West Midlands, told BBC radio.<\/p>\n
A spokesman for the Scottish Conservatives said the UK Tory party \u201cshould carefully review the donations it has received from Hester in response to his remarks\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u2018Frightening\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n And Tory MP Nus Ghani tweeted that \u201czero tolerance on racism is just a slogan in today\u2019s politics\u201d, although she did not specifically mention the row in her post. The Guardian newspaper, which broke the story late on Monday, reported that Hester made the comments during a meeting at his company\u2019s headquarters in 2019 is In a follow-up story on Tuesday night, it wrote that Hester had also said \u201cno room for the Indians\u201d during a crowded meeting, and suggested that they \u201cclimb on the roof, like on the roof of the train there\u201d.<\/p>\n Hester has admitted making \u201crude\u201d comments about Abbott, but claimed that they had \u201cnothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin\u201d. Abbott was Britain\u2019s first black female MP when she was elected to parliament in 1987.<\/p>\n She sat as a Labour lawmaker until she was suspended in April last year for saying Jewish people were not subject to racism \u201call their lives\u201d. Abbott, described Hester\u2019s comments as \u201cfrightening\u201d and \u201calarming\u201d given the murders of lawmakers Jo Cox and David Amess in recent years.<\/p>\n The government is due to unveil a new definition of extremism on Thursday amid a spike in anti-Semitic and Islamophobic incidents since the start of the Israeli aggression in Gaza.<\/p>\n Published in Dawn, March 14th, 2024<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" LONDON: UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak resisted growing calls on Wednesday for his Conservative party to return millions of pounds to a major donor accused of making racist comments about a high-profile black lawmaker. Businessman Frank Hester, 57, is alleged to have said that Diane Abbott \u2014 Britain\u2019s longest-serving black MP \u2014 made him \u201cwant […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":71330,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/i.dawn.com\/large\/2024\/03\/1410325930851fc.jpg?r=103303","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-71329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-top-news"],"acf":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71329"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71329\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pakistaninewspaperlist.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}