Is Britain a racist country? The Conservatives’ biggest donor is in the spotlight for allegedly making racist remarks — and the party has made things worse by being slow to criticise him.
An ugly problem and the man who sums it up
Is Britain a racist country? The Conservatives' biggest donor is in the spotlight for allegedly making racist remarks - and the party has made things worse by being slow to criticise him.
<h2 class="wp-block-heading eplus-wrapper">Discrimi-nation?</h2>
Frank Hester was furious as he criticised a female executive: "I try not to be sexist, but... It's like trying not to be racist but you see Diane AbbottThe first Black woman to be elected to the UK Parliament and one of the country's first Black MPs. on the TV and you're just like... you just want to hate all Black women because she's there, and I don't hate all Black women at all, but I think she should be shot".
Hester's Leeds-based company, TPP, is a tech firm which has been paid over £400m by the government since 2016. Hester paid himself dividends of £33.5m over five years. He has donated £10m to the Conservative Party.
His remarks about Diane Abbott were made in 2019, but have only just come to light.1 In the same year he told a staff meeting that although he made a lot of jokes about racism he loathed prejudice.
A statement from TPP claims that he has tried to apologise to Abbott, that his criticism "had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin" and that he considers racism "a poison which has no place in public life", having experienced it as the child of Irish immigrants in the 1970s.
The situation is complicated by the fact that Abbott was suspended from the Labour party last year for claiming that Irish people, Jews and Travellers were not affected by racism as much as Black people.
The government initially refused to call Hester's remarks racist, but later accepted that they were. Labour is now demanding that the Conservatives return his donations.
The incident raises some deep and troubling questions:
Immoral money Can politicians ever uphold proper standards when they defer to the very rich? Should there be limits on political donations?
Legal enlightenment Can laws eliminate racism? Britain banned all forms of discrimination in 1976, yet discrimination still persists.
School rules Are teachers the best people to instil moral values? What happens if parents have different ones?
Bad jokes Should only members of a particular racial group be allowed to comment on their own ethnicity? How can that be reconciled with freedom of speech?
Blind bias? Can people be racist without realising it? Some say no, when race is such a hotly debated issue. Others claim that everyone is subconsciously racist.
Generalising despising Some people conceive a hatred for a whole community because of an encounter with just one member of it. How can this be prevented?
Yes: It clearly is when someone like Frank Hester can be accepted into the heart of the Establishment, welcomed as the Conservatives' biggest donor ever and awarded the OBEThe Order of the British Empire, a lesser honour than a CBE..
No: If it were, Rishi Sunak would not be prime minister. A survey last year found that only 2% of Britons felt uncomfortable about the idea of living next to someone of a different race.
Or... It is hard to unpick racism from other forms of hostility. The Gaza crisis has brought an increase in anti-Semitism from people who confuse Judaism with Zionism, as well as an increase in religion-based Islamophobia.
Diane Abbott - The first Black woman to be elected to the UK Parliament and one of the country's first Black MPs.
OBE - The Order of the British Empire, a lesser honour than a CBE.
An ugly problem and the man who sums it up

Glossary
Diane Abbott - The first Black woman to be elected to the UK Parliament and one of the country’s first Black MPs.
OBE - The Order of the British Empire, a lesser honour than a CBE.