46 The Times Magazinemeet Simon Dolan for breakfast at
Claridge’s where the maître d’ guides
me to a quiet corner table, the linen
crisp, the crockery set, the little pots
of jam all neatly lined up and ready to
go. Dolan arrives a few minutes later
and approaches with a smile before
extending his hand. To be honest, this is
a moment I’d been anticipating and not
particularly looking forward to. Dolan,
for reasons we will explore, does not go in
for cautious, Covid-age social etiquette. “That
awkward banging forearms?” he says later,
frowning. “It’s not right.”
In fact, Dolan does not go in for any of
the various strictures under which we have
all been living for the past seven months or
so. Masks are “muzzles” (he won’t wear one).
He makes no special effort to sanitise his
hands and it annoys him when his wife does.
“I say, ‘Why are you doing that?’” Lockdown,
and then further limits on gatherings,
licensing hours, household mixing and
so on, have been a “massive overreaction”
from a government acting like a “dictatorship”.
We have, he believes, tanked the economy- “It’s f***ed” – while allowing civil liberties
to be terminally eroded, and all for the sake
of combating an overhyped disease we are
ultimately going to have to learn to live with
anyway. He shrugs. “It’s not like it’s ebola.”
It is possible that some of these views
are familiar to you. Perhaps you share
them yourself, or perhaps you’ve seen them
expressed, in various ways, on the Facebook
pages of frustrated friends and family
members. But the difference is that Dolan,
an entrepreneur with an estimated fortune of
some £200 million, has actually put himself
in a position to do something about it. In May
this year, he began a legal challenge against
the government’s imposition of lockdown
measures, arguing that it had acted illegally
and disproportionately. Under the law,
his argument continued, businesses and
individuals alike should be free to decide what
Covid-19 precautions they do or do not take.
And while Dolan was initially refused
permission for a judicial review – a process in
which a judge examines the lawfulness of a
judgment or action made by a public body – he
has since been given the opportunity to appeal
this decision, in open court, on October 30.
(He’s also launched a parallel action with a
wedding firm, seeking an injunction to halt
the government’s latest lockdown laws.) In
other words, he now has a chance to convince
a judge that the government has a case to
answer. And if he succeeds? Then a judicial
review will take place. At which point,
theoretically, anything could happen.
“And best case scenario? Every law they’ve
introduced over the course of the past six
months or so will be illegal. Imagine unpicking
that one,” he says, wincing. “There would be
claims left, right and centre. The government
would collapse. It would be a mess. But from
my point of view, the benefit would be that it
wouldn’t happen again.”
So this is what he wants and it is the
reason why we are meeting for breakfast.
And, not wanting to get off on the wrong foot,
I shake his outstretched hand. This seems to
please him. He then takes a seat at the table
and orders a macchiato.
Dolan is 51, has perfect chestnut hair, his
tailored white shirt neatly filled by a sturdy
gym physique. He lives in Monaco, but grew up
in Chelmsford and retains a very mild estuary
accent. For someone who seems to be driven
by frustration and anger – he recently tweeted
health secretary Matt Hancock to tell him
that Nazi eugenicist Josef Mengele would be
“proud” of him – Dolan is, in person, perfectly
polite. In fact, he’s quite cheerful. He doesn’t
mind if you disagree with him. He has the same
bulletproof assurance possessed of university
Christian Union members. Like them, he just
seems very happy to sit down and talk to
someone about what he believes in. “There’s
no doubt about this whatsoever,” he says,
speaking of himself and the people who share
his views. “We are on the right side of history.”
This time last year, relatively few people
knew who Dolan was. He made his money
building and then selling an accountancy
business before diversifying into other areas,including a chartered airline and a motor
racing team. Prior to his attempt essentially to
take the government to court, he would spend
his time doing the sorts of things that middle-
aged multimillionaires are supposed to:
a David Bowie fanatic, in 2016 he spent
£14 million on a 17,000sq ft Balinese-inspired
house that Bowie had built in Mustique. In
2014 his racing team, Jota Sport, won the Le
Mans 24 Hours race in their class with Dolan
one of the drivers. He has cars, guitars, a
French château, a couple of properties in the
UK and a luxury apartment in Monaco, where
he lives with his wife, Sabrina, and their two
teenage sons, Bowie (named after Bowie) and
Enzo (named after Enzo Ferrari). Things were
how he wanted them to be. “My view of the
world has always been, inherently, I just want
to be left alone,” he says. “I’m a libertarian.
I don’t like being told what to do.”
But the problem for Dolan – the problem
for everyone – was that the arrival of Covid-19
meant that governments, increasingly, had to
tell people what to do. When Boris Johnson
introduced lockdown measures in March, Dolan
admits that he initially didn’t think too much
about it. “I thought, maybe it’s a good thing?
Maybe that’s how they’re going to deal with it?”
By mid-April, though, with the UK still in
lockdown, Dolan began to feel increasingly
confused about what he was seeing. “I’m a
numbers guy,” he says. “And I was looking at
the numbers and it didn’t seem to make a lotI
Dolan at home in FranceROBERTO FRANKENBERG, ALAMY