A person made rich by Tory NHS outsourcing contracts yesterday appeared to admit saying:
It's like trying not to be racist but you see Diane Abbott on the TV, and you're just like I hate, 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.
He then claimed that:
the criticism had nothing to do with her gender nor colour of skin.
Ministers chose to believe that. No reasonable person could have done so.
They then suggested that he was contrite, although evidence of his persistent racist remarks has emerged. They claimed as a result he should be forgiven, matters should move on and they have no reason to return the £10 million he has donated out of profits he has made at the expense of the public purse.
I have three suggestions.
The first is that the case for more diversity training is overwhelmingly made.
The second is that the Tories should not return the funds but should use it to fund compulsory training on that issue for all their elected officials, candidates and staff as they are very clearly badly in need of it.
Third, we must end the system of political donations exceeding £5,000 per annum from anyone, and from companies altogether. Then we might reduce the influence of such opinion on politics.
None of that will happen though. Why? As I tweeted last night:
When the whole basis of your campaigning is anti-woke, which necessarily means that you are opposed to equality, you might want to appear institutionally racist. It would appear to go with the territory.
Maybe they really did not react to these comments with any of the actual disdain some of us did, hence their delay in actually managing to say anything.
And, meanwhile, the constitutional settlement continues to collapse before our eyes in real time. £10 million of private individual donations to a political party inevitably corrupt it. The alarm bells should be ringing, but are not.
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What is really galling is that the £10million is our, tax payers money “earned” from what are clearly rip off contracts for the NHS. People wonder why we are now paying more tax than ever before and getting worse services. Here we have a perfect example- award overly lucrative contracts to a Tory mate and then watch a % of the money return to the Tory Party to ensure the loss of even the facade of democracy that we have in this country. Is it any wonder people are disillusioned with politics.
Are we really paying more tax than ever before, or is that a Tory propaganda line?
I don’t know? I ask the question. Some people aren’t paying more tax than ever. What about the rest of us? Certainly service is declining, but are we paying more for it?
Richard?
The evidence that overall we are paying more ax as a proportion of gdp is right
But remember gdp is itself a nonsense number
Change racist with another word. Change black and women to some other word. It doesn’t change the sentiment behind the meaning. He wants to shoot an MP. In that regard if you think providing context helps to justify his words, then something is seriously wrong with you. In that case you too could well be desensitised to political violence and at the same time support a government that says voicing an opinion about violence is a form of extremism.
According to government MPs calling someone “scum” is more offensive than using racial and violent language.
Thank you and well said, Richard.
It was amazing how that corruption was lost in all the coverage. (Mum has worked as a government auditor since the mid-1970s, at first working on local government reorganisation. I have worked here and abroad, mainly project finance and regulatory policy. The UK and EU are as corrupt as their former colonies, just more elegant and hypocritical about it, an exception being Italians who I find refreshingly cynical, especially about Germany. I have experienced the corruption of UK and EU officials. )
Let’s not forget the racist remarks made by Labour opponents of Corbyn and their stenographer mates about Abbott and Butler. One had to laugh when Starmer was on his high horse.
I should have added that, hopefully, Mike Parr, who’s on the continent, will pipe up about Cum Ex, Wirecard, Scholz and Warburg, and Uschi von der Leyen and her friends and family in government. I used to work for Deutsche Bank.
Agree with Colonel Smithers. Many years ago I lived in Nigeria and was surprised by how open was the idea of ‘dashing’ people to obtain a favour. But it was at least honest and almost ‘innocent’ in comparison with the cynical and devious corruption that pervades political life in the UK.
There are so many distressing aspects to this. It seems almost personal – beyond racism and sexism. I’ve previously noticed that Diane Abbott is a hate figure for some right-wing middle-aged white men – when as the first and longest-serving black woman MP she should be an iconic figure. Calling for her assassination – however off-hand – the guy needs more than diversity training – he needs a psychologist (and I need one to help me understand such visceral hatred).
I have always got on well with Diane and we have engaged quite a number of times
Just to spell it out. His remarks aren’t racist because he hates Diane Abbott, a black woman.
They are racist because he is therefore inclined to hate all black women because they share her skin colour and gender.
So the weasel words that ‘it has nothing to do with her gender or skin colour’ show either they are completely blind to the implications, or they don’t care about them and just want to paper over the cracks enough to keep the money.
Never mind the incitement to violence against someone who happens to think differently from himself. Why isn’t that being treated as a hate crime by the police?
Agreed
For anyone who doesn’t see that, imagine if he had said “that makes me hate all white men”.
I see that Andy McDonald has been allowed back into the PLP today, so Diane should be allowed in soon.
Unless, of course, they do not want her to be a labour MP any more.
On the subject of regurgitating news stories, in note last month you were very keen to call the U.K. entering “recession”.. any reason why you are not commenting on the economy growing and coming out of recession?? Or doesn’t it fit with your dogma?
https://amp.theguardian.com/business/2024/mar/13/hopes-of-economic-recovery-boosted-as-uk-gdp-rises-by-02-in-january
The data for three months to end January is still recessionary.
Anyway, a far more sensible metric for spotting recession is GDP per capita. Which has been shrinking for well over a year. The only reason GDP is hovering around zero is our population is growing, which of course is almost certain to increase GDP.
GDP is a terrible approximator to wellbeing in any form.
I got interested in economics when the Irish GDP increased by 24%, there was no improvement in the economy and found the MMT equation for GDP. The increase of 24% was due to an airline buying a large number of planes and booking it in Ireland to save tax.
Ireland’s GDP is regularly over stated because of the artificial relocation of profits there
One of the problems of outsourcing, particularly in the easily corruptible public sector that regularly spends billions of tax payers money, is that it tends to attract exactly this kind exploitative and creepy Tory, whose greed greatly exceeds any moral scruples.
I am sure you are already snowed under with work Richard, but at some point the successes, failures and fundamental dangers of outsourcing would be a fruitful and important area of study for somebody.
All covered in great detail and argument in Abby Innes’s excellent book “Late Soviet Britain.”
Sunak appears to have taken a couple of days to come round to the idea that the remarks were in fact racist, thereby wrongfooting all his minions who went public in denying it. Badnoch seems to have provoked the change of heart. The natural party of government showing yet again how nature can deceive.
What puzzles me about the relationship between the business man in receipt of massive government contracts, who donates £10M to the governing party, is that this practice is seemingly legal, yet quite obviously corrupt.
How can we as a proud democracy (world-beating, of course) tolerate such blatant corruption? Have we really so brainwashed by our money grabbing elites (of all political persuasions) into thinking there is no better way?
I dont think BBCR4 has yet mentioned where his money has come from – what look like sweetheart software contracts for NHS. Until that is revealed the complete cycle of corruption will not be understood .
We seem to have no mechanism for reconsidering and reforming the ‘constitutional settlement’.
I have long believed that all political parties should be funded by Parliament. At regular intervals the HofC should agree a central sum of money to fund political parties to be allocated on a percentage basis. This could be divided between them on the basis of the percentage of votes cast for them at the previous election. This would allocate money on a democratic basis, be subject to Parliamentary scrutiny and transparent to the Electorate. It would also encourage careful internal financial management, something they always encourage us to do.
It is clearly an imperfect system but should get us away from the “best democracy money can buy” Just look over the other side of the Atlantic. MPs would be driven by the needs of their constituents not by the wishes of their external paymasters , be they Unions or Corporate or Private interests. All these can continue to lobby for their interests but not have the power to withdraw funding if their requirements are not met. It might also discourage MPs from other paid employment, distracting them from their main function. Just a thought.
Better people allocate general election campaign funding based on percentage votes for published manifestos and all from the public purse. Severe penalties for not implementing manifesto pledges without good reason. Such an arrangement would give the arch-turncoat Keir Starmer nightmares!
Political ‘donations’ above £5,000 should be illegal – and ALL political donations from companies/businesses should be banned – let alone all the other dodges like ‘membership’ of golden circles/ministerial dining clubs etc. It is so glaringingly obvious that they are/or are held out to be means of buying political influence at best, or direct input/control at worst, over what are supposed to be the disinterested public actions of what claims to be a democratic government – or, indeed, a government in waiting.
Indeed, while there is some discussion here about the current actions that may be imperilling ‘our’ constitution, how about some royal reaction to the stain of the appearance of corruption among His Majesty’s government/ministers? Has the monarch nothing to say about a recipient of an imperial honour – Hester is an OBE – behaving in this way? Perhaps whoever has the role of advising the monarch on the conferring and withdrawal of honours should perform their function and advise that Hester’s honour should be withdrawn….as well as a spidery note to the monarch’s ministers to stop taking what look uncannily like ‘bungs’.
There three distinct issues that need addressing in this overall topic but I reply to Nigel’s etc.
We need to eliminate corruption from political life as far as possible. Funding of political parties should be reformed along the lines suggested and made completely transparent.
Also at the very least
1. Donations should not be allowed from companies bidding or awarded government contracts.
2. Donors must not be given honours.
3. MPs that accept donations from businesses and organisations should not be allowed to vote or take part in committees that involve the business area (that obviously needs more thought-I would bar people who accept money from certain organisations from voting on those topics. Thinking of Israeli donations to Labour here but careful thought is required )
It would be good to get higher visibility of corruption into mainstream thinking. Maybe a petition? Carol Vorderman is good at publicising it.
Michelle Mone is another egregious example.
Apologies for rambling.
The boss of JCB gives money to the tory party while at the same time having his machinery demolishing Palestinian homes in Gaza. You definitely need to rethink that.
This verse was occasioned by the first of what later became the so-called ‘Black Tie Balls’. All this was in the ‘Cameroon’ era (with May as Home Secretary) when dinner suits and bow ties were briefly frowned on as too much of a toff’s giveaway. However, dress codes apart, nothing seems to have changed – except that the process is more brazenly shameless than it used to be and, naturally, numbers of past guests are now ennobled – just to rub it in.
SALE TIME
“What am I bid?” the PM huckster cries,
as off-shore funds flit briefly ’cross the room,
from phantom figures flown from non-dom skies
to clutch at power – like some sweaty groom.
Here dressed-down wealth eschews black ties, champagne
and ball-gown glitz, as if the smart set’s suits
were camouflage enough to mask the pain,
lashings of cash exact from those, whose boots
these greedy bidders are not fit to loose.
And well-washed dosh, ’neath table tops, ashamed,
just like some stockinged toe, without excuse,
seeks members insufficiently defamed.
One scooped a ‘May day’ buying soles in town;
new shoes or old, it’s heels that grind us down.
Being “Anti-Woke” of course really means being opposed to “Equitable Demand.” We know that because the Tories over the last 14 years have been cutting benefits for the many whilst dishing them out to the wealthy few!
This is incredible hypocrisy if you bother to think about it because their privatisation of many public services has been based on the advantages of the competitive market (Market Fundamentalism) where according to Neoclassical economic theory adjustment to demand flows automatically to create near on perfect “Equitable Demand.” This is hypocrisy because clearly for a significant number of people who are struggling to make ends meet and still in work (or even retired) there isn’t anywhere near a process of automatic “Equitable Demand” taking place.
In consequence of a lack of automatic process taking place in the marketplace (a prime failure) the government has had to step in and this was recognised by the huge broadening of the welfare state after the Second World War by all parties Labour, Liberals and even the Conservatives. Put another way it wasn’t about welfare it was about optimising “Equitable Demand.” Government “stepping in” of course is all fundamentally related to the government being able to create its own spending money.
All this was forgotten with the advent of Libertarian or Market Fundamentalist ideology gaining sway again which was based on 19th century Neoclassical economic thinking. This has come down to the nonsense of the majority of British politicians nonsensically believing the UK government has “maxed out its credit card”! Nonsensical because they refuse to acknowledge the marketplace is failing to create “Equitable Demand” for a significant number of people and therefore they need to think up a mechanism that will achieve this if the state is to be ruled out. In consequence a massive abdication of moral responsibility is now taking place amongst British politicians with hardly any of them being worth voting for! It’s this that’s causing the depression in the country:-
https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/keeping-an-even-keel/202403/uk-ranks-second-worst-for-mental-health-in-global-survey
The Tories’ electoral calculus here is pretty clear.
They know they aren’t going to win the votes of the majority of voters from the Black community and other ethnic groups who tend to live in areas where the Tory vote is weakest (inner cities, etc). Therefore, they aren’t particularly incentivised to behave in a responsible and acceptable manner to this furore.
In this case, £10 million is worth more to them than a few thousand lost votes here and there, especially as they know they are facing electoral armageddon.
Refusing to accept the premise that Tory donors may be racist might also help them as a dogwhistle to a certain group of voters who would probably think that something said in private 5 years ago isn’t important, something which they might themselves have said, though obviously only in front of their peers – there would never be a black person in the room in such an event.
Ultimately, another subtle move to the right by the Tory party leadership who either don’t realise or perhaps simply just don’t care what they are doing. One of many.
Given the logic of defending Hester’s donations because, “I don’t believe he is a racist”, I wonder if any journo will ask if they would accept donations from, say, Andrew Tate? Providing he assured them that he wasn’t a racist, of course.
A suggestion in Chandler’s book “Free and Equal” looks interesting. Give every citizen a “democracy” voucher of, say, £50 to be given to the party they choose. And reduce private “donations” to a much smaller amount in the hundreds and stop corporate bribes, sorry “donations”.
Another thing that needs reform is lobbying and so-called “think tanks”. These issues are also addressed by Chandler. I wouldn’t allow any lobbyist or Tufton Street crew that wasn’t totally transparent about funding anywhere near politicians or the BBC.
At first this seems like a great idea but when think about it means that the currently most popular parties would get the most money probably in proportion to their current voter share and this would just act to maintain the status quo, albeit making it fairer between labour and tories. I suppose it would be intrinsically proportional.
It’s the chutzpah of taking taxpayers’ money, handing it to one of their racist pals for a “contract” who then returns £10m of it to the Tory party as a donation, that gets me.
I would never knowingly fund the Tory party but here I am a taxpayer funding a party, against my will, that I think could walk tall under a snake’s belly.
The sickening thing is that the Met Police won’t touch this with a bargepole so the corruption will continue unabated.
There is already an attempt to fix the obvious problem, by claiming that the problem is if the public contract precedes the donation. It is, the Conservative apologists are now trying to argue, perfectly acceptable, if the donation precedes the donation. think about that. Nobody in the Conservative Party can even imagine a scenario and theoretical hypothesis, of a quiet agreement being formed between a contract seeker and a political Party, in which the contract seeker proposes to make a donation if the contract is awarded.
It doesn’t matter if it happens. The mere possibility should determine it can never be tested.
Nicky Campbell (BBC) was talking about two propositions; no peerage, and no public contract if you make a political party donation. That seems reasonable to me. It immediately disarms the problem. If you want to donate to a political party (beyond trivial personal amounts; a precise limit could be set understandable to the public); don’t seek public contracts.
“It is, the Conservative apologists are now trying to argue, perfectly acceptable, if the public contract precedes the donation.”
In haste I did not express the proposition accurately. Think before you write, and press send. It is perhaps a sign of the bizarre spirals of nonsense the Conservative media spin in overdrive will go to rationalise a justification that down is up; no is yes; or an obvious wrong is really right.
No wonder nobody trust anyone, or anything; beginning with 10, Downing Street. The politicians who are bewailing our politics loudest, and from inside Parliament and Government. This mess is theirs; first, last and inescapable. It is overdue the time for this Conservative Government to be gone.
Yet another ‘entrepeneur’ who by mere coincidence makes his money from the state rather the market, and is a Tory party donor. Obviously there’s no conflict of interest when the Tories have been in charge of the state for 14 years. Of course not.
Then he turns out to have made not only racist comments but advocated murdering an MP. So obviously he is a dangerous extremist, no?
According to tactical.vote the tory party has already spent £740,000 this year on Facebook ads, fuelling rumours of a May election.
An interesting book to read is Cuckooland, by Tom Burgis. The subtitle is Where the Rich Own the Truth.
He has written about it in the Guardian where he is now a reporter.
A Guardian article about this very subject.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/feb/27/can-i-now-send-the-funds-secrets-of-the-conservative-money-machine
“end the system of political donations exceeding £5,000 per annum from anyone”
That’s an awful lot of money for most people. Maybe £500 would be nearer the mark.
Maybe….
Starmer’s labour party has no shame.
They are sending round emails to members asking them to donate to the party because Sunak won’t give back the £10 million to Hester.
https://i0.wp.com/skwawkbox.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/lab-racist-fund-full.png?ssl=1
I am only surprised he hasn’t said that if the membership donate enough they will let Diane back into the party!
The numbers from the IT work Hester’s company Phoenix Partnership did for the NHS are breathtaking (taken from Private Eye):
2021/2022 £48m pre-tax profits on £746m turnover.
2022/2023 £40m pre-tax profit on £80m income.
The first makes sense
The second does not
So very sorry – mis-typed.
2021/2022 £48m pre-tax profits on turnover £76m (not £746m).
Private Eye comments “NHS isn’t perhaps squeezing the best prices it can from the company”.
That makes more sense!
Or maybe large donations should be allowed but they must be shared out between all parties. Thus the wealthy can fulfil their civic desire to fund political activity but only by spreading their wealth around.
so essentially they must corrupt all political parties or none. Hmmm
Better done by taxing them more
I keep having that argument with my grandson. He admires people like Bill Gates who set up his own charitable foundation.
I say that if he paid more in taxes such charity would not be needed. The Gates Foundation gave £5 billion in 2018, which is more than most countries foreign aid budget.
I once showed he gave less than Microsoft saved in tax by using Ireland….
Sky news is saying that Hester has given the tory party another £5 million. It hasn’t gone through yet as the information is only updated every three months.