Tim Walker, Telegraph.co.uk, 2nd January 2010
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To his political foes, he is an unlikely champion of the underdog, but, two years after he launched a campaign in the Caribbean to prevent the resumption of commercial whaling, Lord Ashcroft has chosen another unlikely cause: the isolated islanders of St. Helena. The billionaire Tory peer, pictured, is so enraged that the Government has “reneged” on its pledge to build an airport on the remote British overseas territory - famous as the location for Napoleon Bonaparte’s final exile - that he has staged a private protest.
With the island in the middle of the South Atlantic down to a population of less than 5,000 and in danger of a terminal decline, Lord Ashcroft recently diverted his private plane - en route from Namibia to Brazil - to “buzz” the islanders, who are frustrated that the Department for International Trade and Development has announced a review of the £300 million airport project. “St. Helena is one of the most beautiful places on earth and Michael [Ashcroft] fears that abandoning the airport project would sound the death knell for the island,” says a friend of the peer. “So he decided to fly at very low altitudes over St. Helena in a personal show of support for the islanders.”
Mike Olsson, who runs the island’s newspaper and private radio station, interviewed Lord Ashcroft live on air as the peer made his unusual protest. “Anything that Lord Ashcroft, or anyone else, does to give us exposure on this issue is welcome.”
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