Let me tell you a joke, people. Jacob Rees-Mogg. He is one hilarious dude! He has named his sixth child Sixtus. He took his nanny canvassing. He is so posh that Latin is his first language. He thinks people who went to state school are “potted plants”. Until recently, he held the record for uttering the longest word spoken in parliament – “floccinaucinihilipilification”. When canvassing in Fife in 1997, he said he couldn’t understand people’s accents.
See, not only is he funny, but he is also real. He doesn’t bother with the whole “man of the people” act because he holds most of the people in contempt. This is masked, it appears, by his unfailing politeness. He rocks up on panel shows such as Have I Got News For You, where the audience is encouraged to laugh at this anachronism of a man.
However, far from being an anachronism, he embodies the three things that many people require of modern politicians: a veneer of authenticity; an ability to cut through perceived liberal wisdom; and enormous privilege that is flaunted, rather than hidden. Think of Farage the stockbroker and his gormless, rich backers. Think of Boris Johnson, a bullying clown with no shame. Think of Trump, a rampaging malignant ego, a dollar-bill nihilist. The threat of these men has been minimised by regarding them as a bit of a joke, a bit of colour in the bland world of technocrats. They are “characters”. They all do well on television.
Rees-Mogg is not too old-fashioned to spurn the medium. When he went on Good Morning Britain today and espoused his views on gay marriage and abortion, outrage was sparked. He thinks same-sex marriage is wrong and laments David Cameron’s support for it. He thinks women should not be “allowed” abortions, even in cases of rape. He didn’t tone it down, he tells it like it is.
And this is what it is: like all his politics, extremely rightwing and reactionary. This politics has not gone away, but is ceaselessly repackaged. It is not a throwback. We are in its throes.
As the Home Office document leaked this week shows, a British-interests-first ideology is now subsumed fully into the Tory high command. No one should be surprised by this any more than they should be surprised that Rees-Mogg is a class warrior (for his class alone) who has a track record of voting down every socially progressive policy. Far from being “eccentric” or “freethinking”, as the extreme right likes to characterise itself, he embodies their tick-box views: anti-gay marriage; anti-abortion; doesn’t believe in climate-change legislation, votes against any rise in benefits, even for disabled people; supports zero-hours contracts and tuition fees. He supported Trump, although he has since distanced himself. This is pure neocon territory.
Every so often, he goes too far. I don’t mean him talking about how he never changed nappies. “I don’t think nanny would approve, because I’m sure she would think I wouldn’t do it properly,” he told Nigel Farage on LBC. Had them rolling in the aisles, that one.
No, sometimes he says what he really thinks. When the Tory party was pushing for more ethnic-minority candidates, he warned against having too high a proportion of them. “Ninety-five per cent of this country is white. The list can’t be totally different from the country at large,” he said. In 2013, he was “guest of honour” at – and gave a speech to – the annual dinner of Traditional Britain Group (TBG), which describes itself as “the home of the disillusioned patriot”. It wants to return black people to “their natural homelands”. When Doreen Lawrence was made a peer, they suggested that she be made to leave the country. Rees-Mogg later sought to dissociate himself from their views, but bear this in mind: the day before he went to talk to TBG, the anti-fascist organisation Searchlight warned him about them. He went and did it anyway. What a character, eh?
How else do you explain why he has topped a poll of Tory supporters on who should be their next leader? Sure, this is silly-season antics, except that all politics is silly now. The moral vacuity at the centre of the Tory project is producing this kind of desperation. Ken Clarke is now a marginal figure akin to Dennis Skinner. The nasty party walks undead. The ancient Tory grassroots salivate over another born-to-rule chancer.
As usual, Rees-Mogg’s religious faith is used to excuse his appalling bigotry. He is a Catholic and this kind of fundamentalism is always anti-women, but for some reason we are to respect it. I don’t. It has no place in public life.
Far from being iconoclastic, this MP’s views are entirely predictable. He is a fund manager with interests in the tobacco, mining, oil and gas industries. His path to parliament was Eton, Oxford and investment banking.
It is true, then: he is the real deal. The real deal is not a charming, upper-crust throwback, but a thoroughly modern, neoconservative bigot. Views that verge on fascistic are fine if dressed up in tweed with a knowledge of the classics thrown in. What a laugh! No one who thinks like that could get elected, could they? That would be a sick joke indeed.