As soon as votes were counted in the race to be Tory candidate for London mayor, Zac Goldsmith’s problem became clear. He had won comfortably, but just 9,200 party members bothered to vote — compared with the 80,000 who took part in Labour’s contest. Goldsmith praised his party for a ‘civilised and constructive’ debate, unlike the ‘divisive and vicious’ battle won by Sadiq Khan. But if Labour can call on a machine whose activists outnumber the Tories by nine to one, the Conservative candidate faces a real disadvantage.
The size of Khan’s vote, Goldsmith thinks, is deceptive and swollen by trade union members. But in May, he concedes, ‘They will be out en masse, combined with the Corbyn-istas. So yes, they know that this matters. They know that they have to throw the kitchen sink at it. And they will.’ He doesn’t sound like he’s looking forward to it.
Goldsmith’s first political battle came in 2010, when he won Richmond Park from the Lib Dems. He was tipped for greatness but, on arrival at Westminster, showed no interest in climbing the greasy pole. Instead, he tried to make it more slippery — campaigning for voters to have the power to sack their MPs and threatening to resign his seat if David Cameron granted a third runway to Heathrow. If he wins in May, he says, he’ll resign his seat anyway. ‘I don’t think that you can do both jobs.’
We meet in an upcycling shop in a West London council estate, where he’s talking to former soldiers who have started a business saving furniture from the skip. He remains a keen environmentalist and is standing on a pledge to make London the ‘greenest city on Earth’. But his priority, he says, is housing.
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