For Tory grandees licking their wounds and plotting their return after their disastrous 2024 general election performance, the opulent, fire-lit rooms of the exclusive club 5 Hertford Street are a sanctuary.
But in recent weeks, their long lunches have been rudely interrupted by Liz Truss, who has been accused of wandering the premises in search of members to poach for her own rival operation, just one street away, which asks “founding members” for an eye-watering £500,000.
The former prime minister’s alleged headhunting is understood to have irritated those who run the Mayfair club, including its owner, Robin Birley, the entrepreneur and son of Annabel Goldsmith and the nightclub owner Mark Birley. A friend of his said: “It is rather rude, but at £500k, we are rather better value.” Membership of 5 Hertford Street is a relative snip at less than £2,000 a year.
On a recent December afternoon, the bauble-bedecked club bursting at the seams with Conservative big hitters and their sequin-clad guests, a member asked the Guardian: “Who would pay half a million to hang out with Liz Truss?”
The Leconfield was dreamed up by Truss and the property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz, who is transforming his Curzon Street offices for the venture. Unlike 5 Hertford Street, with its gleaming, blood-red facade, Leconfield House is a fairly run-down office block opposite a William Hill betting shop.
While 5 Hertford Street is known for its swish sushi bar, fairy light-lit cigar terrace and friendly staff who will bring you the most expensive club sandwich you have ever eaten on a silver platter, Truss is championing no such trimmings in her pitch for new members.
Her new club will be a “strategic nexus for a global network of pro-growth leaders”, she declares on its website, where she is heralded as the “56th prime minister of the United Kingdom”. The venue will be “a secure ecosystem where you can operate with others at the forefront of technology, policy and capital,” she adds.
Business dealings and political ventures – including Truss’s own leadership campaign – are frequently schemed up in the plush meeting rooms of what insiders call “5H”. However, the club does not market itself as a “unique business centre”, rather a social club where deals are struck on the side.
While Nigel Farage is among those to have visited, the club has long been the home of the libertarian side of the Tory party, with Boris Johnson, Zac Goldsmith (Birley’s half-brother), Priti Patel and Truss herself often seen within. Its rooms, decorated in maximalist style with rare paintings jostling for space on the walls, have been a sanctuary for her in turbulent times. Its owners have allowed her to host events, and while trade secretary, Truss notoriously demanded to have a £3,000 lunch there with the trade envoy to the former US president Joe Biden on the taxpayer’s dime.
While 5H are understood to be mildly peeved that she is taking advantage of their hospitality to drum up support for a rival club just a two-minute walk away, it is not feared that she will make a dent in their business ventures. It is also believed to be unlikely that regular visitors including Harry Styles, Leonardo DiCaprio, Prince William and Margot Robbie will be swapping 5H for the Truss club any time soon.
One former cabinet minister and member of 5H simply laughed when asked if he would become a “founder member” of the Leconfield, and that is understood to be the general attitude among loyalists to the existing club.
The transformation of Leconfield House into Truss’s lair is the latest attempt by Tchenguiz to revamp the property. In 2022, he was foiled by the Planning Inspectorate in his attempt to turn the building into a 70-bedroom luxury hotel with a spa. Last year, he enlisted top architects to transform Leconfield into high-end flats, extravagantly priced at £7,500 a sq ft.
Finally, the tycoon has bet on Truss to help him make the building into, as the website claims, a “beacon of sophistication and elegance”.
Truss did not respond to a request for comment.
