Who on earth is Lord Ashcroft?

Who on earth is Lord Ashcroft?

By ROBERT COLVILE 9/21/15, 5:59 PM CET Updated 9/22/15, 8:53 AM CET

http://www.politico.eu/article/who-on-earth-is-lord-ashcroft/

LONDON — For Lord Ashcroft, revenge is a dish best served steaming, sizzling hot. His new biography of David Cameron, “Call Me Dave,” contains plenty of juicy gossip: guests taking cocaine at dinner parties in the Cameron home; the future leader’s student habit of getting stoned and listening to Supertramp; the claim that Lynton Crosby, architect of the prime minister’s unexpected election victory, doesn’t really rate him.

But none of it compares to the allegation that, as part of an initiation ritual into Oxford University’s debauched Piers Gaveston Society — named for Edward II’s probable lover and, incidentally, an anagram of “not pigs-averse”— the future PM inserted his private parts into the mouth of a severed pig’s head. Cue a blizzard of gags about pork barrel politics, pulled pork, snoutrage, “Bae of Pigs,” rasher decisions, #piggate, #Hameron, etc.

Downing Street may have denounced the accusations — sourced to an Oxford contemporary and fellow MP, a category which encompasses Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and several others — in a tone of frosty dignity. And others may have expressed their skepticism about their accuracy and verifiability. But Lord Ashcroft won’t give a damn about that. He claims his book, co-written with the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, is not “about settling scores.” That didn’t stop the Daily Mail running its exclusive serialization under the headline: “REVENGE!”

“One of the worst people in the world to have as your enemy … and the best person in the world to have as your friend”

Perhaps Cameron should have listened to William Hague. Speaking at Ashcroft’s 60th birthday party — a gala affair — the former Tory leader described the billionaire as “one of the worst people in the world to have as your enemy … and the best person in the world to have as your friend.” It is a description echoed by Andrew Mitchell, the former international development secretary and another Ashcroft ally: “He is a very good friend and a truly terrible enemy. He has an elephantine memory, which of course is even worse in an enemy.”

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But who is Lord Ashcroft? A self-made businessman and philanthropist, he is also a figure of enormous political influence. He is the former treasurer and deputy chairman of the Conservative Party. He owns Conservative Home, the party’s main online bulletin board and debating chamber; Politics Home, a non-partisan news site; Dods, the political information service and publisher of Parliament’s own in-house magazine; and has a significant stake in the political publisher Biteback. He also runs by far the largest private polling operation in the country.

To his critics, Ashcroft is a powerful, even sinister figure — a Koch brother with a Twitter account. He is reluctant to carry out interviews in person, preferring to respond to written questions. He even has the most basic supervillain prerequisite, an island lair: in this case the Caribbean tax haven of Belize, where he makes his home.

Yet there is another side to Ashcroft, too. Those who have met him talk of a generous, funny and loyal man, private rather than secretive and with a wicked sense of gossip and mischief (when he was accused, as Tory treasurer, of being a Blofeld figure, he came into the office with a stuffed white cat). There is little sign of him imposing his will on his various publications, or using them to further an agenda: He is, by all accounts, a benign and hands-off proprietor.

He is also astonishingly generous: A military history obsessive, he has amassed the world’s largest collection of Victoria Crosses and put it on display in a purpose-built gallery in the Imperial War Museum. He has supported schools and other charities, and founded and funded Crimestoppers U.K., whose anonymous hotline has been responsible for the arrest of 17 criminals a day since it went nationwide in 1988. He has promised to give the vast bulk of his fortune to charity.

Ashcroft, in other words, is a man who is kind to his friends, or those in need, but merciless to those who have crossed him. And nowhere is that better shown than in his complicated history with the Conservative Party.

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Born in Chichester, the young Ashcroft made his entrepreneurial bones by reselling doughnuts to his fellow pupils at a mark-up. In his twenties, he bought a loss-making cleaning company for £1, turning it round and selling it at a handsome profit. Soon, he had a business empire, investing in everything from janitorial services to camping equipment, car auctions, even funeral hearses. His prize asset was ADT, America’s largest security services firm, which he acquired in 1987; a decade later, it was acquired by Tyco for $6.7 billion.

The following year, Ashcroft spotted another outfit that was trading below its book value: the Conservative Party. He was already a donor, but now — under William Hague — he became the party’s treasurer and, in effect, its savior. At a time when the Tories were fractionally less popular than smallpox, it was Ashcroft’s injection of business expertise and cold hard cash (£1 million a year between 1997 and 2001) that kept the party off life support.

[Ashcroft] became the party’s treasurer and, in effect, its savior

Inevitably, Ashcroft’s business affairs came under scrutiny. The Times accused him of dodgy dealings in Belize, but was forced to retract the claims. As with Cameron, Ashcroft used a book to stick the knife in further: in “Dirty Politics, Dirty Times” he accused the journalist Tom Baldwin (later Ed Miliband’s chief spin doctor) of attempting to steal his personal information and of indulging his “voracious” appetite for cocaine in the hotel room of his absent editor during a Tory party conference, alongside two other Times hacks.

Also under scrutiny were Ashcroft’s tax affairs. Hague secured him a peerage, in return for guarantees that he would become domiciled in Britain and pay tax here. In 2010, it emerged that Ashcroft was still (or had again become) resident in Belize — something he now says that Cameron was aware of in 2009, even though he denied knowledge at the time.

Despite the controversy, Ashcroft remained an invaluable asset to the Tory party. But after Hague, the relationship became fractious. In 2003, he offered new Tory leader Michael Howard £2 million to fight key marginal seats — but only if the money was spent as he, Ashcroft, decided. As he said of his business career, “I was rarely, if ever, interested in being a passive investor … invariably, I was looking for outright control.” Closer to the 2005 election, he became so outraged by the overly optimistic figures being produced by the Tory machine that he set up his own separate polling operation, presenting its findings to Howard in a note entitled: “Don’t believe the bullshit.”

It was this moment that laid the foundation for Ashcroft’s second career — not as a money man, but as a data guy. He became fascinated by polls and polling. His merciless dissection of the Tories’ loss in 2005, a report called “Smell the Coffee,” laid bare how toxic the Tory brand had become — and paved the way for Cameron’s modernizing leadership. Under Cameron, he was duly installed as deputy chairman and head of the target seats campaign, but kept himself at a distance, gathering his own data and presenting it rather than basing himself in head office.

Ashcroft was, he says, promised a job if Cameron won the election

There is plenty for amateur psychologists to get to work on in the difference between Ashcroft and Cameron: the self-made businessman from a humble background who made a fortune through sheer bloody hard work, versus the impeccably privileged stockbroker’s son often chided for devoting too much time to “chillaxing.” Certainly, Ashcroft has spoken of his resentment of the strain of Toryism that puts “blood and one’s public school above intelligence, ability and achievement.”

But the cause of their split — and Ashcroft’s flamboyant vendetta — is rather more simple. Ashcroft was, he says, promised a job if Cameron won the election, and Cameron wouldn’t give him one. The PM apparently claimed Nick Clegg had vetoed the idea — something Clegg denies. There was, later, an offer of a junior position as a Foreign Office whip; insult added to injury.

Since he cut his ties with the Tories in the wake of this snub, Ashcroft has reinvented himself as a non-partisan figure. During the election, he made his constituency polling available to all; he has since produced a study of Labour’s loss, “Red Dawn,” that could have served as a blueprint for recovery had the party not lurched off in another direction.

He has a large following on Twitter, where he often issues cutting commentaries on Tory policy. He has his companies, his charity interests, his yachts — and, having resigned from the Lords, he is able to keep his title while basing himself firmly and profitably in Belize. Now, with his book having set the entire nation gossiping about David Cameron’s purported porcine proclivities, he has had his revenge, too.

Robert Colvile is a former head of comment at the Daily Telegraph and was most recently news director of BuzzFeed U.K.