Revealed: Rudd’s* £8m mansion plot
THIS is the eight-bedroom Georgian mansion where a plot to overturn the Brexit result is being masterminded by the brother of pro-Remain Cabinet Minister Amber Rudd.
The Grade 1-listed country pile belongs to Roland Rudd, the chair of the People’s Vote campaign for a second Brexit referendum, and has been used by the multimillionaire financial PR guru for weekend ‘brainstorming’ sessions to plan how to thwart the 2016 result – including backing Yvette Cooper’s amendment to delay Article 50.
His sister, the Work and Pensions Secretary, has angered No 10 by publicly agitating for a ‘no deal’ Brexit to be blocked by MPs.
Ms Rudd has suggested she could resign unless Tory MPs are allowed to vote as they wish on the Cooper amendment, which would give Parliament the power to delay Brexit for up to nine months.
Mr Rudd, whose close friends include the Labour Europhiles Peter Mandelson and David Miliband, attracted mockery last week when he called for Brexit to be stopped during an interview from Davos – where he was attending the annual meeting of the global financial elite.
His interviewer said incredulously: ‘You’re talking to us from Davos.
‘If you’re listening to this and you’re in Stoke and you voted to Leave it is going to sound like a coup being organised behind your back’.
Mr Rudd most recently used his £8 million country property in Somerset – he also has a £23 million mansion in London’s exclusive Holland Park – for a People’s Vote strategy session a fortnight ago.
Among the senior figures spotted sweeping into his drive were Hugo Dixon, the organisation’s deputy chair who is the great-grandson of Winston Churchill.
Guests arriving at the country house enter along a carriage driveway leading to a grass turning circle. It comes with its own livestock buildings, game larder, gardener’s workshop, croquet lawn, extensive wine cellar and a ‘staff flat’ for the help.
Mr Rudd is also on friendly terms with Tony Blair – another leading proponent of a second referendum – and offered his son Euan work experience at Finsbury, his financial PR company. When the People’s Vote group was launched last year, its stated mission was to demand a referendum on what kind of Brexit the UK wanted rather than to overturn Brexit all together.
But since then it has shifted its strategy to giving people the opportunity to stay in the European Union.
Mr Rudd, 57, is the son of late millionaire stockbroker Tony Rudd.
After studying at Millfield public school and Oxford he joined the Financial Times, before setting up Finsbury. He sold his 80 per cent share in his firm for £40million in 2001, and earned £5.2million last year as its chairman.
He is also a trustee of the Royal Opera House and a board member of Germany’s Bayreuth opera festival.
Last night a spokesman for Mr Rudd declined to comment.