LIFE
London mayoral race. MPs break
promises all the time, but you’d be
hard pushed to find an example of
Zac doing that. Indeed, the reason
he’s resigning and re-fighting his
seat is because he promised the vot-
ers of Richmond Park that he would
do precisely that if the government
decided to expand Heathrow.
Some people have uncharitably
claimed that he’s risking very lit-
tle. He won the seat in 2010 with a
swing of 7 per cent and increased his
majority in 2015 to 23,015, although
in pointing that out his critics are
inadvertently acknowledging that
he’s been an exemplary constituen-
cy MP. In fact, he could lose. Ladbro-
kes currently has the Lib Dem as the
favourite.
For one thing, Zac came out for
Leave during his mayoral campaign
and Richmond Park voted Remain
in the EU referendum by a margin
of two to one. Incidentally, his sup-
port for Brexit is another example of
his integrity. He knew it would hurt
him in the London election, but to
have done anything else would have
been a betrayal of his long-standing
Euroscepticism as well as his father’s
memory.
Don’t forget, he’ll be running as
an independent, not a Conservative.
Yes, he has a large personal follow-
ing in the constituency, but will it be
enough to beat the Lib Dem if he
doesn’t have the imprimatur of being
the official Tory candidate? Politi-
cians don’t usually take those sorts
of risks unless they care deeply about
an issue.
Zac’s defeat in the mayoral elec-
tion won’t help either. That Zac fought
a ‘dog-whistle’ campaign has nowI
’m baffled by the reaction to Zac
Goldsmith’s decision to resign as
the Conservative MP for Rich-
mond Park. It is being interpreted,
even by MPs on his own side, as an
act of opportunism, a chance to reha-
bilitate himself with the metropoli-
tan elite after his bruising defeat in
the London mayoral election. Sur-
prisingly few people seem willing to
entertain the idea that he might be
acting on principle.
Exhibit A in the case for Zac’s
defence is the fact that he’s the MP
for Richmond Park in the first place.
Zac could have applied to be the can-
didate in any number of safe Con-
servative seats in 2010 and, given his
profile, easily have been selected.
Yet he chose a seat that was held by
a Lib Dem with a 3,731 majority. His
friends and political allies told him
he was insane. Even if he won, they
pointed out, he’d then face the pros-
pect of having to defend a marginal
seat. Not only would that mean he’d
have to spend every spare moment
in the constituency, but his political
career could be unceremoniously cut
short, as Michael Portillo and others
have discovered. Nevertheless, he
stuck to his guns because Richmond
was the area he’d lived in all his life.
Then there’s the fact that he kept
his promise to seek the consent of
his constituents before entering the
become almost universally accepted
as hard fact, but I beg to differ. He
didn’t brand Sadiq an extremist or at
any point imply that because he’s a
Muslim he sympathises with Islam-
ist terrorists. Rather, he pointed out
that Sadiq had shared platforms
with Islamists in the past in order to
ingratiate himself with activist circles
in Tooting, just as he endorsed Cor-
byn in order to secure the mayoral
nomination before ditching him. It
was Sadiq’s naked opportunism that
Zac was drawing attention to. If he
was guilty of anything it was of being
too high-minded, not taking the low
road. He then became the victim of
a clever smear campaign by Labour,
successfully spinning his attack on
Sadiq’s flip-flopping as ‘Islamopho-
bic’. Few smears are more effec-
tive than accusing your opponent of
smearing you.
I’m sure that Zac feels aggrieved
at being misrepresented in this way,
not least because his own sister at one
point sided with his critics. But that
doesn’t mean that he’s using Heath-
row as an excuse to withdraw from
politics in a blaze of glory, knowing
ahead of time that he’ll lose. That, too,
has been suggested by his critics —
often by the same people who claim
he’s risking nothing by triggering the
by-election. If he wanted to give up
his political career, he’d just resign
and have done with it. No, Zac is that
rare creature in contemporary poli-
tics — a man of principle. He’s not a
friend of mine and I don’t agree with
his stance on Heathrow. But I take
my hat off to him.Toby Young is associate editor of
The Spectator.Status Anxiety
In defence of
Zac Goldsmith
Toby Young
MICHAEL HEATH
He is th at rare
creature in
contemporary
politics —
a man of
principle