JUST ABOUT BANQUETING!
So, Theresa, will there be any JAMS at your right regal £5,000-a-head fundraiser? Or will it be...
WHEN Theresa May is star guest at a champagne banquet at the home of her heroine Queen Elizabeth I, it is a safe bet that few JAMs – the ‘just about managings’ she said her Budget was designed to help – will be present.
The £5,000-per-head cost is roughly what the average ‘JAM’ household spends on food and drink – in A YEAR.
The invitation to the dinner at Hatfield House’s historic Old Palace on May 11, leaked to The Mail on Sunday, appears to be a blatant Tory bid to cash in on the Prime Minister’s adulation of Britain’s greatest Monarch.
It is the family seat of exTory Cabinet Minister Lord Cranborne, the 7th Marquess of Salisbury, whose ancestor Robert Cecil, the 1st Earl of Salisbury, was one of Queen Elizabeth I’s most powerful Ministers.
This newspaper revealed seven months ago how Brexit PM Mrs May had said she sees herself as a modern-day ‘Good Queen Bess’ – who had her own famous European victory: sinking the Spanish Armada. Now would-be ‘Good PM Tess’ is using Hatfield House in a bid to raise £500,000 to fight her own greatest battle – the 2020 General Election.
The invitations were sent out last week to wealthy Conservative Party supporters by South African-born treasurer Sir Mick Davis, a mining multi-millionaire. His letter states: ‘We are delighted to invite you to a private dinner at the historic Hatfield House with the Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Theresa May and Mr Philip May.’ He says the dinner will be hosted by the Marquess and Marchioness of Salisbury and continues: ‘Tickets are £5,000 per guest and proceeds will fund future campaigning up to 2020.’
Known as ‘Mick The Miner’ in the City of London, Sir Mick boasts of the house’s aristocratic heritage, ‘its superb Jacobean crafts-manship’ and even adds that it has its own armoury. He says: ‘The drinks reception will be held in spectacular Hatfield House, built in 1611 by 1st Earl of Salisbury. Dinner will follow in the adjoining historic Old Palace, built in 1485, acquired by Henry VIII as the childhood home for his daughter Elizabeth I.
It was under an oak tree in the Park in 1558 where Elizabeth learnt of her succession to the throne. The first meeting of her trusted advisers was in the BanquetingBanquet Hall.’ In an interview shortly after she became Prime Minister, when Mrs May was asked which historical figure she most identified with, she replied: ‘Queen Elizabeth I– a woman who knew her own mind and achieved in a male environment. Remember her speech: “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman but I have the stomach of a king.”’
The remark is from Elizabeth’s rallying cry to her troops on the eve of defeating the Armada in 1588.
Last night, a Tory spokesman defended the event, saying: ‘Unlike Labour, who are bankrolled by the trade unions, we rely on the generosity of supporters from all walks of life.’