Barclay twins cut up rough in Sark

Sir Fredrick and Sir David Barclay (pictured), the secretive tycoons who own the Daily Telegraph and the Ritz hotel, have reacted badly to the outcome of the first ever elections on the tiny Channel island of Sark. Instead of voting for the pro-democracy factions, the inhabitants opted to broadly maintain the existing feudal system when they went to the polls on Wednesday. The twins’ reaction to this has been swift and brutal: they have closed down all their business interests on the island, resulting in the loss of more than 100 jobs out of a total population of 600.

The Barclays, who live in a fortress-like building on the island of Brecqhou, a few hundred metres off Sark, had warned in a newspaper interview this week that they might stop their investments if the elections went against their wishes, but many of the islanders felt this was bluff and bluster to get their own way.

In the run-up to the vote, Sark islanders were bitterly divided into two camps, one supportive of the twins, who wanted to build a helipad and tarmac all the roads, and another supporting the island's feudal lord, Seigneur John Michael Beaumont. The traditionalist camp feared that the brothers were altering Sark's peculiar customs and independent status which dates back to the 16th century.

Gordon Dawes, the Barclays' Guernsey lawyer, said: "Sark will go back to what it was before the Barclays came and invested. The people of Sark have sent the Barclays a clear message and they feel they cannot work in a place where there is such an anti feeling against them.

However, Diana Beaumont, wife of the feudal leader, has another take on it. "They were the ones that started all this democracy business, now they don't like it because they haven't won."