Zac? He’s never had a proper job and got his money from daddy, says Heathrow boss
HEATHROW’S chairman has launched an extraordinary attack on London mayor candidate Zac Goldsmith, accusing him of holding the country ‘to ransom’ by opposing a third runway.
Sir Nigel Rudd claimed the Tory MP was handed money ‘by daddy’ and has ‘never had a job’ except one that his uncle gave him.
He said he ‘failed to understand’ why the Conservatives had selected Mr Goldsmith as candidate when he had ‘no academic achievement’.
The 68-year-old businessman said: ‘He was left money by his daddy, he’s never had a job other than a job given to him by his uncle, so what qualification has he got to do anything?’
Eton- educated Mr Goldsmith, who did not attend university, is thought to have inherited £200million to £300million from his billionaire father Sir James. At 23 he became editor of The Ecologist magazine, owned by his uncle Edward ‘Teddy’ Goldsmith, having joined the previous year. Mr Goldsmith, 40, has said he feared being seen ‘as a mother’s boy’ after his mother Lady Annabel gave £50,000 to his mayoral campaign.
Sir Nigel announced this week he would quit as Heathrow chairman in September after nine years but said his departure was not linked to the Government’s failure to back an independent report recommending a third runway there.
He said the delay in making a decision on expansion, which was due by the end of the year but has been put back to the summer, was not based on economic reasoning.
‘Politics trumps economics’, he told The Telegraph, adding: ‘It’s probably great politics but it’s terrible economics.’ Critics have accused the Government of delaying the decision until after the mayoral elections in May because Mr Goldsmith has threatened to quit his parliamentary seat of Richmond Park under the Heathrow flightpath if a third runway is built.
Sir Nigel said: ‘It’s difficult to understand the thinking behind the decision to throw it into the long grass other than it’s political, that the Prime Minister has enough on with the European referendum. People are desperate to have this connectivity, and we’re being held to ransom by Zac Goldsmith and a few MPs who have interests in their constituencies that they feel they’ve got to represent,’ he added.
A spokesman for Mr Goldsmith said: ‘Sir Nigel is a respected figure in the City but it seems he has allowed his disappointment over Heathrow to get the better of him.’