Lord Laidlaw, one of Scotland’s richest men, is helping to bail out English National opera, with a £2 million donation. Laidlaw, “who has almost single-handedly kept the Scottish Conservatives afloat since 1997, is to help to finance a number of productions over at least two seasons at the Coliseum in London’s West End. His intervention will be a huge relief to the opera company, which has been beset by a wave of financial and managerial problems.”