Lord Feldman
THERE ARE a number of red faces in the upper echelons of the Conservative Party over the cash for access row. But while plenty of senior Tories have been appearing on television to defend their party’s reputation, the co-chairman of the party, and the man who was responsible for the appointment of the now disgraced Peter Cruddas, has been keeping a low profile since the Sunday Times’s incriminating undercover tapes were released at the weekend.
Lord Feldman of Elstree has been co-chairman of the party since 2010. Previously, in his role as deputy treasurer, he had, according to the Conservative Party website, responsibility for “widening the party’s fundraising base”.
Feldman pursued this objective enthusiastically, and at times controversially. He and then shadow chancellor George Osborne, met the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska at financier Nathaniel Rothschild’s villa in Corfu in 2008, prompting hostile coverage in the media. It was alleged at the time that there were discussions over a donation to party funds (which would have been illegal). Feldman has denied that he was soliciting money from the billionaire.
He was also associated, through Jayroma, his family textile business, with Jordan Kamcev. Kamcev was the Macedonian owner of clothing company Orka, who hosted both Feldman and Cameron on a visit to Sklopje in 2003, where the England team were playing Macedonia in a football international. It later emerged, embarrassingly, that Kamcev was under investigation for tax fraud, though he was later cleared.
Andrew Feldman was educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s School and read law at Brasenose College, Oxford. He not only gained a first class degree but a new friend in one David Cameron. The two worked together on the May Ball committee and played tennis together. As Cameron’s star rose, so did Feldman’s. After university he worked as a management consultant before being called to the Bar in 1991. He pursued a career as a barrister until 1995 when, due to his father’s illness, he took the decision to join Jayroma, quadrupling the company’s sales over the following few years.
Some of those profits were ploughed into the Conservative Party and Feldman was made chairman of the Leader’s Club which, in return for £50,000, gave access to the party leader.
Feldman, who is married with three children, lives near the Prime Minister’s family home in west London. Political colleagues confirm that — like Tony Blair and his fundraiser-in-chief, Lord Levy — Cameron and Feldman still meet up regularly for a game of tennis together and enjoy a relationship “on equal terms”. He is described as bright, straightforward and enthusiastic, with a good business brain. Cameron speaks of him as “one of my oldest and best friends”.
Feldman, who has been a peer since December 2010, is thought to want to drive the party away from dependence on wealthy donors, the pursuit of whom got Cruddas into trouble.
When not busy manufacturing ladieswear or on party business, he skis, enjoys yoga, and stays at