The Tory candidate has run a low-key campaign so far to be London mayor, but now the battle has turned nasty. His rival, he says, ‘will trample on anyone’ – and must be stopped

It’s day one of the official campaign to be mayor of London. In 45 days’ time, all will be decided. Zac Goldsmith’s battle bus is waiting outside a microbrewery in Woolwich, south-east London. The bus is blue and white, and smart and svelte, like Goldsmith himself. Its message could not be more simple: “Back Zac.” Goldsmith, the 41-year-old Conservative candidate for mayor and son of the billionaire businessman James Goldsmith, is promising more homes, better transport, safer streets, cleaner air. To be fair, so are all the other prospective mayors, though you feel Goldsmith’s air will be that little bit cleaner.

Hop Stuff brewery could not be more on-message with its locally sourced ingredients, startup potential and recycled malt being bagged up for the pig farm. Hop Stuff boss James Yeomans brings two filled cups – super-strong Double IPA, and a cloudy yellow beer made up of rosemary, lemon and thyme that could double as a Simon & Garfunkel song. Goldsmith sniffs one beer, then the other. “Wonderful. Marvellous smell.” But he doesn’t partake. He slips a nicotine gum into his mouth and apologises. Beer doesn’t agree with him, he mutters, gives him a headache, makes him drunk quickly, and he’s got a tough day ahead of him. In fairness, it is 10am.

There is something languid, graceful and disengaged about Goldsmith. He occasionally asks Yeomans a question about the process, but he doesn’t go out of his way to win him over. We head for the Taproom, a pizza restaurant five minutes’ walk away. Goldsmith’s once golden hair is now a distinguished platinum. He wears a blue suit, smart brown coat and the black scuffed shoes of a politician. A raggle-taggle band of activists are waiting for him – maybe 40. Some wear Brexit badges, some Stop Heathrow Expansion badges. Everybody here seems to want out of somewhere.

Goldsmith’s voice is monotone and a little muted. You sense he has rarely raised his voice in his life. He says Boris Johnson has put London back on the map, made the city proud of itself, but despite his succcess – or perhaps because of it – many Londoners have been priced out.

While Boris’s USP is buffoonery, Zac’s is breeding. He is urbane, likable and extremely polite. Yet there is something colourless about him and perfunctory about the speech. He could be reciting his times tables.

And then he ups the ante. He says Khan is not fit to be mayor; that he is incapable of doing business with the government.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Goldsmith celebrates winning the seat for Richmond Park in 2010. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA

Goldsmith has a reputation for getting on with people and working across parties – notably with the Greens, Ukip and Respect in a doomed attempt to introduce a recall law that would have enabled voters to remove dodgy MPs from office before the end of their term. But this campaign is being masterminded by the office of Lynton Crosby, the attack-dog strategist who helped Johnson defeat Ken Livingstone to become London mayor and David Cameron beat Ed Miliband to be returned to office as prime minister. Crosby’s signature manoeuvre is the “dead cat on the dining-room table” – you say something so outrageous about your opponent that everybody talks about that rather than the issue that was initially causing grief. During the general election campaign, the defence secretary Michael Fallon groundlessly suggested that Miliband would scrap Trident to strike a deal with the SNP; the effect was to make people forget how weak Cameron’s campaign had been.



Goldsmith takes questions from the floor. No, he says, he’s not going to make big promises, he’s a realist. A woman asks him about solar power. “I’m going to deliver a solar power revolution,” he says to a huge roar.

Zac Goldsmith is the trustafarian’s trustafarian, not so much born with a silver spoon but a canteen of Aston Martin cutlery in his mouth. He had every privilege imaginable – beauty, money (his father left him an estimated £200m-300m, which resides in the offshore family trust), an Eton education. James Goldsmith wheeled and dealed in pretty much everything from Ambrosia Creamed Rice to suntan oil and Alka-Seltzer. Goldsmith’s mother Annabel is best known as a socialite and the eponym for a London nightclub. Goldsmith was one of eight children born to James, who was married three times.

Young Zac was a firebrand, as James had been. Like his father, he left Eton before his time was up – whereas James dropped out after winning £8,000 on a three-horse accumulator, Zac was expelled for smoking dope. In his early 20s, he edited the Ecologist magazine, founded by his uncle Edward Goldsmith; by his mid-20s he was a father (he now has five children with two women – three with his first wife, the heiress Sheherazade Ventura-Bentley, and two babies with his second wife, banking heiress Alice Miranda Rothschild). As a young man, he said he would have to be drugged to join the Conservative party, then run by William Hague. In 2010, he became the Conservative MP for Richmond Park, where he grew up, and in 2015 was returned with the largest increased majority of any incumbent MP in the country.

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After meeting the activists, we talk in a cafe. He says he is tired, not getting much sleep – his youngest son is only two months old. “I’m going to chew nicotine gum while we talk, if that’s all right,” he says. He has grey-blue eyes and long, Bambi-like lashes. There is something surprisingly coy or shy, almost Princess Di-ish, about him; he tends to look down or away when he talks before returning your gaze with a sombre flutter.

How does he think the campaign is going? “I feel the momentum is with us,” he says without conviction. “You’re always an underdog when you start in London.” (Khan is 2/7 favourite at the time of writing, while Goldsmith is 5-2.)

One thing Khan mentions at every opportunity is that he is the son of a bus driver. Does Goldsmith think he is disavantaged by his gilded life – perhaps it is hard for many of us to relate to a man who is so wealthy? “I think background stories like that matter in a very narrow context. The flip side to the Sadiq Khan story is I was dealt a very, very good hand in life, and I think that would matter if people think I’m insincere, or not a genuine politician. Then you become that figure because of your background. But if people believe you, even if they disagree with you, then your background ceases to be an issue. So the answer is no, I don’t think it’s relevant and I don’t think it has a bearing on the campaign.”

Does he ever wish he had less money? “No. I’ve been able to do things that I hope are useful as a consequence of my dad’s success. I don’t apologise for that. I feel obliged to play that hand as well as I possibly can.” Goldsmith is a keen poker player. How has he played his hand? “I’ve always tried to help campaign groups all over the world by doing things that I think are very important. That gives me a huge amount of pleasure.”

While it feels as if Khan has been dominating the news for months, Goldsmith’s campaign has been virtually invisible. There were even stories that this was the Crosby strategy – the less we saw of Zac, the better.

Goldsmith says that theory is nonsense. “I did not start this campaign with a ready-made army of people able to deliver the message. As you know, political parties are mostly based on volunteers. We don’t have that. We didn’t have the unions. The unions are there for Sadiq Khan. We didn’t have this Momentum with a capital “M” organisation ready to throw the kitchen sink at everything.” To be fair, neither does Khan. “I had to go from borough to borough, recruiting people and building up.”

Has he had enough support from Conservative HQ? “I’ve had lots of support.” Enough? “There’s nothing else I’d want. I am an independent-minded campaigner.” Another rumour is that Cameron doesn’t even want the Brexit Goldsmith to win.

Although Goldsmith has a reputation as a progressive Tory, he has consistently voted for regressive taxes (for the bedroom tax, against the mansion tax) because, he says, the overriding principle is positive – to help people back into work or free up more social housing. Last week, Goldsmith had to resign as patron of a charity for disabled people after voting in favour of cuts to disability benefits.

Does he think he has changed much from the young man who aspired to be an “eco-terrorist” and denounced the Tories in his 20s? He smiles.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest As editor of the Ecologist in 2002. Photograph: Johnny Green/PA

“I’m going to take objection to that. I can’t tell you I never said that because I don’t remember, but I remember at the time when that was printed, I questioned whether I could have said that because I’ve always been quite a fan of William Hague. I wouldn’t have personalised an attack in that way.”

But in general, that was what you thought of the Tories? “I was 21, 22. I didn’t think any of the mainstream parties were even close to addressing the big concerns … but I wouldn’t pretend any of the mainstream parties, including my own, have all the answers today.” In many ways, he says, young Zac was the same – pro-business, anti-corporatist, non-patrician, socially liberal, with a libertarian flavouring.

Like his father, who founded the anti-EU Referendum party, he always had a campaigning streak. As an eight-year-old, he knocked on local doors, telling people it was cruel to keep birds in cages and asking if he could liberate them. “I had a fruit pen, and I turned it into an outdoor enclosure. In my memory, I saved thousands of birds, but in reality I probably only saved about four or five. I got a couple of canaries, a diamond dove, two or three budgies and a very old zebra finch. See, that was political.”

Perhaps the greatest difficulty Goldsmith faces is that he can come across as a dilettante, a dabbler. While it is obvious that Khan is desperate to be mayor, I tell him, I’m not so sure that he is. “But power is not an end,” he responds, elliptically. “I think for him it is. For me, it’s a means to an end.” Go on then, I say, convince me you really want the job. “It’s about making sure London heads in the right direction. I live here; I’ve always lived here. I want London to flourish, and I do want London to be the greenest, cleanest city.” I’m still not convinced.

“I love being able to influence things in parliament, to be able to change the law. But there’s a limit to what you can do as a backbench MP … I’m not suited to being a government minister. But to be the directly elected mayor of the city of London gives you an opportunity to actually make things happen on a completely different scale, and that is hugely exciting.” He seems to be telling me what the office could do for him, rather than what he can do for the office.

Why. Do. You. Want. To. Be. Mayor? I spell it out word by word, frustrated. And suddenly, he changes his tone. There is an urgency and anger. As so often, he explains it in terms of obligation and duty – only it turns out that he feels his moral duty is to stop Khan from being mayor.

“If I compete with this man on promises alone, I’ll be outpromised because he is a man without principle. And you could say the same of politicians generally. I have worked with many, many politicians, but I haven’t met many, if any, politicians who I regard to be as unprincipled as the person I’m up against in this contest at the moment.”

How? “Because he is a person who will trample on anyone and anything to get to where he wants to get to.” Give examples?

“I can spend hours giving you examples. Heathrow! He was the last minister in any government actively championing Heathrow expansion; then he flip-flopped for the sake of the mayoral campaign. His answer when asked was he didn’t know about air quality, but he did because the secretary of state at the time, Hilary Benn, begged him not to champion Heathrow expansion, on air-quality grounds. He was the architect of the mansion tax. He’s passionately against it now. He just promised the Jewish community he was anti-sanctions on Israel, but a few months before he was actively persuading the Labour party to pursue sanctions on Israel. I can go on and on for ever. There are so many issues.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Goldsmith family portrait in 1987. Photograph: Peter Jordan/Time Life Pictures/Getty Images

Blimey, I say, trying to interrupt the monologue. “Let me finish this point. I know there are people in Labour who say to get by in politics you’ve got to be willing to lie, to speak with a forked tongue, but that’s why people hate politics, the reason people pull away from politics, the reason I still hate politicians.” He’s now talking faster and faster, like a breathless teenager. “I think it is the curse of politics.”

So why is Goldsmith in politics? “Because I don’t hate all politicians and politics is a necessary way to get things done. If you care about anything, you care about politics. That’s why recall matters; when I was doing recall I was thinking of people like Sadiq Khan, not people fiddling expenses. More people are elected on promises they never have any intention of keeping. They are elected on lies. They should be held to account at any time, not just at elections.”

So, I say, you’ve made it perfectly clear you don’t like the fella. He grins. “Well, I’m answering your question.”

He is hardly the first to suggest that Khan is an opportunist, but the problem is that in making his attack so personal, he has reduced the debate to its lowest common denominator. His campaigning literature has been questionable at best. Goldsmith introduced race issues where none exist, apparently doing his best to set the Anglo-Asian world against itself. So in one leaflet he suggested that Khan had never supported Tamils; in another, aimed at Hindu Indians, he suggested the family gold and jewellery would not be safe with Khan, a Muslim of Pakistani origin.

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This is nonsense, isn’t it – aren’t you just pandering to prejudices and stereotypes? “No,” he says. “It’s not a race element at all. I talk to different communities about their concerns. When I have a public meeting with British Indians, they worry about what’s happened to the Labour party – historically, these are people more likely to vote Labour than Conservative – and they’re worried about things like wealth tax and the fact that jewellery burglary is going up and they are being targeted because they tend to have more jewellery in their homes than most other people.”

But you’re saying the jewellery is unsafe with Khan? “Yes, absolutely right. I do public meetings with elderly people, where almost everyone is at retirement age. I also talk about the same issue and things like the Freedom Pass, and I will tell them the Freedom Pass is not safe if Sadiq Khan is elected. He has told us he will protect it, but I don’t believe that.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest On the campaign trail this week. Photograph: Christian Sinibaldi/The Guardian

I can’t believe this is charming, agreeable Zac Goldsmith talking. My eyes widen by the second and I’m lost for words. Isn’t the demonisation of Khan just too Lynton Crosby, too much dead cat on the table? “I don’t agree,” he says. “It’s not a dead cat.”

Katy Eustice, Goldsmith’s communications director, who works for Crosby, is sitting next to us. “Lynton’s not even involved,” she says.

In other literature, he has described Khan as radical and divisive. Surely he must be aware that these words are loaded when applied to a Muslim?

“Who’s criticised me? Honestly, who’s criticised me? He has. No one else has. Love it or hate it, the Labour party is more radical now than any time in my lifetime. He is radical and divisive because of his approach to politics. He is a fundamentally partisan figure in politics. These are terms that I use and will continue to use to describe Sadiq Khan. And it is obvious to anybody who is not unfair or wanting to misinterpret, the terms I was using were in a political context. I have not met a normal person who has chosen to intepret that leaflet like that.” He looks at me, and his hands are shaking.

“Off the record, do you agree?” he asks.

No, I say, on the record I think that language is inflammatory.

Silence. I feel as if I’m trapped in a conspiracy thriller – say, a deranged spinoff of Homeland.

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I tell him I never imagined him conducting such a nasty campaign, and that I am shocked. What has happened to him? “I don’t think …” He trails off, and starts again. “This is not a normal campaign for me. It would have been a completely different campaign if they had chosen someone like David Lammy or Tessa Jowell. It would have been about the issues. This is different, it really is. And that’s unavoidable. It’s not enjoyable. I have never run a campaign that was involved any kind of attacking in my life, but it is necessary in this campaign because I am up against somebody who poses a real danger to London. I’m absolutely convinced of it.”

It’s strange. I feel as if I’ve witnessed some kind of breakdown, and am tempted to reach over to give him a hug. In a few years’ time, will he have any regrets about this campaign? He shakes his head. “My biggest regret would be if I don’t win on 5 May, not for personal reasons but because I feel it is my responsbility to stop him being mayor. I really do.”