Business secretary dismisses reports of plot and rejects calls for her party to return donations from Frank Hester
Kemi Badenoch said she was ‘actually quite surprised’ that people want the Tory party to return Frank Hester’s donations.Kemi Badenoch said she was ‘actually quite surprised’ that people want the Tory party to return Frank Hester’s donations.Reports of Conservative plots against Rishi Sunak are the work of just “one or two” MPs, and the party needs to unite before May’s local elections, Kemi Badenoch, the business secretary has argued.
When the Guardian first reported the comments, Hester released a statement saying he “accepts that he was rude about Diane Abbott in a private meeting several years ago but his criticism had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin”. The statement said Hester abhorred racism, “not least because he experienced it as the child of Irish immigrants in the 1970s”.
After Hester’s comments emerged last week, Downing Street initially condemned them only as wrong, declining to say they were racistAsked why she had done it, Badenoch told Sky that the issue was “particularly pertinent because it was about a black woman, I’m the only black woman in the cabinet”.
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