Article by Nick Hasell for The Times on 23 April 2007.
The Conservative Party’s deputy chairman has put his weight behind an international campaign.
In a career spanning four decades, Lord Ashcroft — born Michael Anthony Ashcroft — has assumed a variety of mantles. He was a callow accountant, an up-and-coming contract cleaning entrepreneur, a Thatcher-era corporate raider, Belize’s Ambassador to the United Nations, and treasurer of the Conservative Party.
Yet it is his latest incarnation that may raise eyebrows. Meet Baron Ashcroft of Chichester KCMG, ecological warrior.
This week, Lord Ashcroft will emerge as the backer of a campaign — or, in his words, “a programme of persuasion” — aimed at coaxing six eastern Caribbean countries to withdraw their support for whaling.
