Duelling gentlemen
- 22 Oct 08, 10:49 AM
Not so long ago gentlemen friends who fell out would have taken their pistols to France to resolve their differences in a duel. These days it would seem that you use your PR agency to send a letter to the Times and put out statements on your behalf. The aim is not to kill your rival but to kill off his career.
So, where are we in the duel between Nat Rothschild and George Osborne? Osborne's been badly hurt but not fatally wounded.
There are now two conflicting accounts of exactly what happened in Corfu but key details are shared - the possibility of a donation by LDV - a firm controlled by Oleg Deripaska - was considered by the Tories and later rejected.
The dispute is over whether the story goes much further than that. Rothschild and now his American business associate - the financier James Goodwin - claim that Osborne pursued the idea of a donation in a discussion before, during and after a visit to the oligarch's yacht. Osborne denies that strenuously, admitting only to being present when a donation was suggested by Rothschild.
A few facts make this story curious:
A donation from LDV wouldn't have been illegal.
It would have been a pretty daft way of trying to covertly channel money to the Tory party since a Google search would reveal that LDV is controlled by the Russian oligarch.
£50,000 is a trivial sum to the Tory party and an absurdly small sum to secure from a billionaire.
So, either Osborne and Tory fundraiser, Andrew Feldman hoped for a much bigger donation or they weren't much bothered by the funds on offer but couldn't resist the prospect of a trip to meet an intriguing man on a magnificent yacht.
The question today is whether Rothschild considers the duel to be over or to have only just begun. Is he willing to go further - not just about this story but about other things he claims to know about the shadow chancellor? Friends who've known you for 20 years have plenty of stories to tell. Is Nat Rothschild ready to tell them or does he consider it time to put the pistols away?
