Later today Mr Goldsmith will join the membership of David Cameron's new environment and quality of life policy group. The image on the right comes from last Saturday's Guardian.
This profile has been helped by the fact that Mr Goldsmith was profiled in two national newspapers last weekend - last Saturday in The Guardian and then by Jasper Gerard in The Sunday Times.
Stuart Jeffries of The Guardian described him as the best-looking Tory he'd ever interviewed. Born in 1975 and educated at Eton, he is the heir to Jimmy Goldsmith's £300m fortune and an enthusiastic poker player. He lives in Devon with his wife and three children. But what do we know of Mr Goldsmith's political views?
Like his father, James Goldsmith of The Referendum Party, Zac is a Eurosceptic. He sits on the board of Bill Cash's European Foundation with David Davis.
The Guardian: "He is hostile to big government and transnational corporate interests, and friendly towards local free-market systems favoured by rightwing American outfits such as the Cato Institute. It's a philosophy that led him to fund groups taking on GM crops, industrial agriculture and nuclear power, to tilt at the EU and to eulogise Switzerland, where true democracy, he argues, was shown to work last weekend when an anti-GM referendum was passed."
Opposition to nuclear power is certainly one of his strongest beliefs. He opposes nuclear energy on health and security grounds. He suggests that cancer rates around Sellafield are eleven times greater than the national average. Noting that Greenpeace broke into Sizewell B two years ago, he talks about the "huge security risk" of nuclear energy.
He advocates a levy on airline fuel.
Although an environmentalist he is hostile to the Green Party:
"It's not really a serious party. I don't understand them - all this stuff about revolving leaders, some of whom are very talented and others who aren't... I hate that kind of green politics that suggests people ought to live like monks. There is a problem with the green movement berating people it needs to have on side. If you live in a system of rampant consumerism, it's pointless to be continually blamed when you can't really do otherwise."
In a General Election editorial for The Ecologist magazine he explained his support for the Conservatives. This is how The Guardian noted that support: "In a leader in the Ecologist before this year's general election, he wrote: "Which of the main parties has an answer to climate change, antibiotic-resistant superbugs, the rural crisis, collapsing fish stocks?" A vote for the Labour party was a vote for the status quo, he said, while the Lib Dems were "an authoritarian party with a big-government, legislative answer to every problem". Which left the Tories, who, Goldsmith contended, had made useful suggestions, such as referendums on local planning issues.
12.35pm, 14th December 2005: VOTING FOR ZAC GOLDSMITH HAS NOW ENDED AND HE BECOMES OUR FIRST NOMINEE FOR THE GOLDLIST... BUT ONLY JUST. HE RECEIVED 130 POSITIVE VOTES (50%) AND 122 NEGATIVE VOTES (47%).
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