22 Comments

• Benjamin Mathis 30th Sep '07 - 5:22pm

  If he can be persuaded to agree to differ on the EU, I could see Zac turning into a serviceable Liberal Democrat. He certainly has the green credentials. The question is, would he want a seat to fight in the forthcoming election? And where could be found that would take him?

  One in the eye for David Cameron for sure, if true

• Tristan Mills 30th Sep '07 - 5:47pm

  I hope not.

  He’s no liberal. He’s a paternalistic green feudalist. Being a green does not make you a liberal (look at the Green Party for a start).

  ‘Green credentials’ mean nothing, would we want someone like George Galloway if he had ‘green credetials’? I hope not.

• ARd 30th Sep '07 - 5:54pm

  If the GE will be this year, as speculated, could Zac Goldsmith really become a Lib Dem candidate, even if he defected now? I think I read somewhere, that a person must be a member of the Lib Dem party for at least a year before he can be put before a local party for selection? Just curious.

• MatGB 30th Sep '07 - 6:08pm

  I (mostly) agree with Tristan–there are liberal Greens, but Goldsmith is no liberal.

• Richard Harris 30th Sep '07 - 6:08pm

  I hope not; he’ no liberal. The Tories are welcome to keep him. We need to be a bit more selective about who we allow into our ranks. We should not be a repository for extremists, rejects, malcontents and nutters from other parties.

• Nick Barlow 30th Sep '07 - 6:41pm

  I could see him leaving the Tories, especially after the battering his commission report has received from various sections of that party, but I’d think he’d be more likely to go to the Greens rather than us. I don’t think he’s a liberal yet, but I’m not convinced he’s an entirely lost cause.

  There’s an interview with him here that might be of some interest, anyway.

• Tim Leunig 30th Sep '07 - 9:39pm

  I would be delighted to see him in our party. We don’t know much about his views on civil liberties, international affairs etc (except Europe), but clearly on the environment – his first issue – we are closer than any other party with parliamentary representation. Let us not be too precious, if he want to join us, let us welcome him with open arms (and I am sure Susan Kramer can find some “Vote Kramer” leaflets for him to deliver around here!)

• Mark Mills 1st Oct '07 - 10:10am

  He is not a liberal (but then again neither was sedgemoor). I would normally be against someone like him joining us but his defection would be such an embarrasment for Cameron, such a boost for Richmond Lib Dems and such a potential financial boost for us that I would welcome him with open arms.

• Amy 1st Oct '07 - 5:02pm

  Couldn’t Labour have Goldsmith and Lib Dems Bercow?

• Amy 1st Oct '07 - 5:12pm

  However, IF Goldsmith would defect to Lib Dems, it would be interesting to see him stand in Finchley and Golders Green.

• Cy Pomeroy 1st Oct '07 - 5:34pm

  Dream on, why would he want to join the Lib-Dems, political oblivion for him that way, and forget Bercow too, if he was gonna jump ship he would have done so by now. Keep your eyes on some of your right wing MP’s, much more likely to defect to the Tories than Tories coming over to Lib-Dems.

• welshproudliberal 1st Oct '07 - 6:55pm

  As David Laws said to George Osborne. “Thank you very much but I am not a Conservative, I am a Liberal”

  Dream on Cy Pomegranite.

• Sid 2nd Oct '07 - 2:16am

  I hope not. A very rich man telling the lower orders how to cut down on energy and so on will endear us to no-one.

• Sid 2nd Oct '07 - 9:40am

  I tend to agree, Sid. His proposals did not go down well amongst the Tories did they?

• Geoffrey Payne 2nd Oct '07 - 9:44am

  I would like to say to Mark Mills that Brian Sedgemoor IS a liberal and a much valued member of Hackney Liberal Democrats. During the 1980s it was the Labour Left AND the Liberals who were defending civil liberties from an onslaught from Thatcher’s Tories. Brian had the courage of his convictions unlike most of his colleagues in what is now New Labour who have dumped civil liberties in favour of authoritarianism.

• Geoffrey Payne 2nd Oct '07 - 9:52am

  As for the other personalities, I believe Bercow supported the war in Iraq and hasn’t admitted even in hindsight that he was wrong to do so, so I would rather he join New Labour.
  As for Goldsmith, I am against rejecting his defection to the Lib Dems on the grounds of his class, after all Nick Clegg went to public school, so using that as an argument is silly, and wrong in principle in any case. I am concerned that he is hostile to the EU and that he joined the Tories in the first place. However I strongly agree with him that global warming is the most important issue facing the world today, and we need someone with his expertise and sense of urgency to help us develop our policies where he won’t he hampered by the Tory obsession with free markets, which torpedoed their green agenda.

• Angus Huck 2nd Oct '07 - 10:27am

  I know not if Zac Goldsmith is reasonably describable as a “liberal”. But one thing is for certain: his father, Sir “Jams” Goldsmith”, was not.

  OK, a man cannot be blamed for what his father was or did, even if he lives off his father’s fortune.

  But the father in this case was a self-proclaimed “green”, and it is from him, and his uncle, Teddy Goldsmith, that Zac derives his greenery.

  Sir Jams was a kind of aspirant Roman Emperor who believed the world should be ruled by an aristocratic elite, with the common folk (much slimmed down by disease and famine) reduced to the status of serfs.

  Goldsmith Senior’s views were very much informed by the late Lord Lucan (admirer of Hitler), the late John Aspinall (eugenicist), and his brother, Teddy, whose magazine, “The Ecologist”, Sir Jams bankrolled.

  But how “aristocratic” was Goldsmith? He was the grandson of a Frankfurt Jew on his father’s side, while his mother was the daughter of an Auvergne hill farmer and worked as a croupier in a Cannes casino. (I, too, am the descendant of hill farmers. Does that make me an aristocrat?)

  And what of Aspinall? Descended from Lancashire mill-owners? And Lucan? The first Earl of Lucan was a soldier in Cromwell’s army given land and a title for being beastly to the Irish.

  The common folk are just as good as any of these eco-fascists. None of them in the Lib Dems, pelase.

• Chris Paul 2nd Oct '07 - 11:33am

  God you lot are an easy wind up aren’t you? The UK Daily Mischief you say?

• Melian 2nd Oct '07 - 1:36pm

  Angus Huck, the Benn political family (already in five generations, I think) is a good example of why you shouldn’t judge one’s political views by his father’s or uncle’s views.

• peter 2nd Oct '07 - 2:13pm

  I thought we had Lucan (aka Thurso) already?

• Machiavelli's Understudy 24th Dec '07 - 6:57pm

  How did I miss this one?

  Anyway, please- take him. He’s awful. It might dent our pride a little, but it’ll be worth it in the long run. He definitely isn’t a Conservative. He isn’t a Liberal. He’s not a liberal Conservative. I think he might just be a Liberal Democrat, though…

• Richard Underhill 27th Nov '16 - 5:58pm

  If he loses the Richmond Park by-election will the Tories give him a peerage?