Stop breeding! Jemima’s acid barb for brother Ben
TORY MP Zac Goldsmith and brother Ben have ten children between them — and an 11th on the way. But that hasn’t stopped Ben whingeing about Britain becoming too crowded. The financier and environmentalist, 36, got on his social media soapbox this week to call the UK’s population boom, driven by migration, ‘madness’. ‘The population of the UK increased by 538,000 last year,’ Ben wrote on Twitter. ‘Extrapolate that growth rate over your lifetime. This is madness. Pure madness.’
Socialite Jemima Goldsmith, Ben’s older sister, has repeatedly scolded her younger brother for his ‘ignorant’ and ‘offensive’ posts on social media — so she gave his hypocritical remarks short shrift. ‘Stop breeding then!’ Jemima wrote in response. ‘You’re about to have your fifth child and Zac just had his sixth.’
Ben’s migration moan comes weeks after he waded into the debate following the terrorist attack on London Bridge.
He claimed that Enoch Powell, who was sacked as Shadow Defence Secretary for his inflammatory 1968 ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, ‘had a point on the dangers of mass immigration’. At the time, Jemima, 43, (pictured below) had a dig at her brother by pointing out that he is the grandson of German Jewish immigrant Franck Goldschmidt, who anglicised his name to Frank Goldsmith when he moved his family to Britain in 1895. Zac has three children with first wife Sheherazade, plus two daughters and a son with second wife Alice. Ben has three children with heiress Kate Rothschild, whom he divorced after her affair with hip hop artiste Jay Electronica. His current wife, lingerie model-turned-caterer Jemima Jones, is expecting their second child in September. Despite the baby boom, there’s no danger of overcrowding in the Goldsmith households. Thanks to the billions the Goldsmiths amassed after Frank emigrated to Britain, both brothers own spacious London townhouses.