General election 2017: Who is Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith?

The news that Zac Goldsmith has been selected as the Tory candidate for his former constituency of Richmond Park has prompted outrage from his political opponents.

So who is he and why is his nomination controversial?

Early life and family

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Born Frank Zacharias Robin Goldsmith, he is the son of billionaire tycoon Sir James, a member of the Goldsmith banking dynasty, and brother to campaigner Jemima Khan, who is associate editor of the New Statesman.

Like his father, he attended Eton, although while Goldsmith Sr dropped out from school aged 16, Goldsmith Jr was expelled after marijuana was found in his room.

"Amazingly, at that one particular moment in my Eton career, I was innocent," he told the Financial Times in 2011.

The cannabis belonged to someone else, he said, "but I never complained about it because I was never particularly innocent at school".

He divorced first wife Sheherazade, with whom he had three children, in 2010, after ten years of marriage. He married banking heiress Alice Rothschild in 2013.

Career

Rather than attending university, which he says is "hugely overrated for most people", Goldsmith travelled the world before, aged 23, he was appointed editor of The Ecologist magazine by his uncle Edward Goldsmith.

While editor, he joined the Conservative Party's Quality of Life Policy Group in 2005, co-writing a paper for David Cameron that championed environmental taxes and a moratorium on new road and airport building.

He became the Tory candidate for Richmond Park two years later, winning the seat in 2010 to become the constituency's first Conservative MP since its creation in 1997.

A bid for mayor

In 2016, Goldsmith went head to head with Labour's Sadiq Khan for the position of mayor of London.

However, after suggesting in the Daily Mail that his fellow candidate had "whether intentionally or not, repeatedly legitimised those with extremist views", his campaign came under heavy criticism.

The London Evening Standard says it came under attack "even within the Tory Party, for its negative messaging and focus on Mr Khan's Muslim background".

The Heathrow expansion issue

A long-time critic of proposals for a third runway at Heathrow, the government's decision to approve expansion of the airport prompted Goldsmith to resign as Conservative MP for Richmond Park.

Their decision was an "outrage", he said, and would be "a millstone around this government's neck for many, many years to come".

He urged voters to turn the by-election that resulted from his resignation into "a referendum on Heathrow expansion" and ran as an independent.

He was defeated by Liberal Democrat Sarah Olney – with whom he will do battle again on 8 June.

Goldsmith has vowed to continue opposing a third runway at Heathrow, telling The Independent: "No honest person can doubt my commitment to stopping Heathrow expansion. I have led the campaign and have had the backing of all the key groups opposing it."

The reaction to his return to politics

Following the news that Goldsmith would stand as a Conservative candidate in the upcoming general election when the Tory manifesto is expected to include Heathrow expansion, Green Party co-leader Jonathan Bartley told the Independent: "Zac Goldsmith's hypocrisy is staggering."

Tom Brake, Liberal Democrat MP for Carshalton and Wallington, asked: "Zac Goldsmith couldn't stand on a Conservative platform last time, so what's changed?"