Words: Gentleman's Journal
The Goldsmith Dynasty is one of intrigue and attraction. And at the heart of it is Zac, a candid character regarded as one of the few real rockstars among Westminster’s 650 MPs. Edwin Smith explores the charisma of the man tipped to be the next Mayor of London.
Consider, just for a second, the hand that Zac Goldsmith has been dealt by life. His late father was Sir James ‘Jimmy’ Goldsmith, the swashbuckling billionaire corporate raider who dabbled in publishing, politics and environmentalism, and still had time to father eight children by four different women before his death in 1997 – when Zac was just 22. His mother is Lady Annabel, the society beauty after whom the legendary London nightclub Annabel’s was named, thanks to her previous marriage to the entrepreneur Mark Birley. His older sister married the Oxford-educated Pakistani cricketer Imran Kahn, who, at 42, was then double her age. She converted to Islam, moved to Pakistan, learned to speak Urdu and brought up her two young sons as their father pursued a career in politics. Jemima was a close friend of Princess Diana and, following her own divorce in 2004, was romantically involved with Hugh Grant and, more recently, Russell Brand.
On top of this extraordinary backstory – a combination of exoticism and the establishment – Zac and his immediate family are beneficiaries of a £300 million trust fund that, so long as it continues to be managed sensibly, will ensure that they and their heirs are multi-millionaires in perpetuity. Then, of course, there are his good looks, almost universally acknowledged charm and passionate environmentalism. It’s not difficult to see why he attracts attention, and how he has come to be regarded as one of the few real rockstars among Westminster’s 650 MPs.
His initial rise in politics was rapid. In 2005 he was drafted in by the new party leader and fellow old Etonian David Cameron to consult on the Tories’ green policies. Not long after, he was offered the safe seat of East Hampshire for the 2010 general election, but eventually declined, opting instead to run in Richmond Park, where he spent much of his childhood. He beat the incumbent Liberal Democrat in 2010 and then boosted his majority more than any other MP in 2015 – from 4,091 to a staggering 23,015.
In the process, he even won admirers among his political adversaries. “At my very first hustings I was sat next to him and I was extremely nervous,” says Sachin Patel, Labour’s candidate for the seat. “He just reassured me that nerves were normal and that he still gets them. I’m not sure how many candidates would help one another. In a post-election interview he mentioned his respect for me, which he didn’t have to do. But it just shows he is a true gent.”
But this is where Goldsmith gets interesting. Because despite the power of the dynasty, the glamour, his own charm, green credentials, local popularity and chumminess with the Prime Minister, he remains just an MP. Not a member of the Cabinet, not even a junior minister, but a mere backbencher with no major political achievements to speak of.
“I think when he joined, he thought that he’d be Secretary of State for the environment by now,” says Michael Fabricant, the Conservative MP for Lichfield. “He’d be writing speeches for the Prime Minister, influencing policy. But, as is the case for many the backbenchers, things haven’t quite turned out the way he’d have liked.”
Not that Goldsmith would publicly admit this. “I like being a parliamentarian, a backbencher,” he said last year. “I don’t want to be a minister as I’d have to have a lobotomy and read someone else’s script.”
Fabricant tells me that although Goldsmith is well liked and “a nice guy”, there is a perception in the party that he’s not what you would call “a team player”.
“He is slightly distant, and not that clubbable. I think people see him as prima donna-ish – maybe he comes across as holier than thou, or greener than thou, if you like.”
You sense that being described as “not that clubbable” might secretly please the man who once said that he didn’t “stand a chance of surviving the various rungs of the ladder [in party politics]”. He added: “If there existed a job description for an MP, it could be reduced very simply to using their votes and presence in Parliament to hold Government to account and represent their constituents.”
That is precisely what Goldsmith seemed intent on doing when he promised to quit as an MP and trigger a by-election in his constituency if his party were ever to back the expansion of Heathrow Airport. At the time of writing, the Airports Commission report that will recommend how the UK can best meet the demand to expand its airport capacity is yet to be published. But Goldsmith has made it clear that if the Government were to decide that building a third (and perhaps even a fourth) runway at Heathrow was the best way to solve the problem, he would do his level best to protect the interests of his constituents – who mostly oppose the plans – even if it would make life difficult for his party and his Prime Minister.
He has a track record in this respect. The amendments he proposed to the bill regarding MP recall (making it easier for constituents to boot out errant or misbehaving MPs) were at odds with his own party’s views, but failed to make an impact, being comprehensively voted down in the Commons.
And, according to conservative commentator and author Richard D. North, no matter how principled Goldsmith’s stand might be, it’s unlikely to be decisive. “A national party has to take on the chin the individual eccentricities of high profile MPs, they don’t give into them. This is the minor inconvenience of having high-profile, showbiz MPs; you like them when they’re useful to you, but you just shrug your shoulders when they’re not.”
Still, it would make sense for Cameron to avoid a public bust-up if there were an elegant way of doing so. One solution might be to usher Goldsmith eastwards, away from his constituency seat and toward City Hall. Boris Johnson, the current Mayor of London, has suggested that Goldsmith should be chosen as his successor and be put forward as the Conservative candidate when the Capital goes to the polls next year. And while the Right Honourable Member for Richmond Park explicitly denied that he would be interested in running for mayoral office at a Conservative fringe event in 2013, his more recent statements on the issue have notably omitted any attempts to clearly rule himself out of the running.
North, who has met and debated with Goldsmith on a number of occasions, says that he has his doubts about Goldsmith as Mayor, but agrees with Fabricant that a man of such apparent gifts might have made more of a political impact than he has managed so far. “He may actually be a lightweight. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility. He’s never given any sign at all of being particularly bright, although that doesn’t stop a person from being bloody valuable.”
Aged 16, Goldsmith was kicked out of Eton for possession of Cannabis (he claims it belonged to somebody else), but he did manage to get four A-levels before travelling the world on an educational programme affiliated with his Uncle Teddy. He later became a researcher for the International Society for Ecology and Culture, living and working in India for a time before returning to London and being handed the editorship of The Ecologist magazine, – again, thanks to the person who did most to cultivate his environmentalism, Uncle Teddy.
“He is a Goldsmith who has had to find a different way of being ‘Goldsmithian’,” says North. “That’s a tough thing if you’re the scion of a family which has such powerful genes. There must be a shed load of stuff going on inside Zac, and I like that he’s trying to work out how to make his life his own. I like Zac.”
One way in which he and the rest of his generation have taken after their forebears is in their marital (and extra-marital) arrangements. Zac’s marriage to Sheherazade Ventura-Bentley – the mother of three of his four children – ended after an affair with the daughter of another famous banking dynasty, Alice Rothschild. Rothschild and Goldsmith are now married and have a child together but, to make matters more ‘Goldsmithian’, Alice’s sister Kate is ex wife to Zac’s younger brother Ben. Happily, though, Zac, Ben and Jemima all remain on good terms with their respective exes. Various inter-generational combinations of the extended modern family often come together socially.
After environmentalism, one of Goldsmith’s great passions has been gambling. He once described it as “a decadent form of meditation”, and has even been involved in running a bookmaking business with his brother. Despite this, and his inherited wealth, he is not often accused of being flash. He once claimed to have only ever bought one pair of shoes and happily admits to having worn his father’s old suits.
Goldsmith’s stated view that “if you’re lucky enough to be born with ample resources, then it’s your responsibility to put something back” seems to be genuinely held, but the way he goes about it in the coming months and years will be revealing. The future of Heathrow and the race to be London’s Mayor could well have a decisive influence, but there is no obvious sign that he is committed to remaining in politics for the long term. “It’s odd to bother to go into politics and to be the person that he is and yet stay so quiet,” says North. “But he may yet become something extraordinary. I wouldn’t dream of being surprised by such an interesting and unpredicatable character; nothing surprises me about Zac.”
By Edwin Smith
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