- 04 Dec 2024
There’s a memorable moment in Meet the Rees-Moggs — which, given the otherworldliness of its principal characters, is probably best described as “unreality television” — when Jacob Rees-Mogg is asked by a friend whether voters told him that the politicians don’t understand their lives.
The remark was made on the evening of the general election, during which even the mighty Moggster fell victim to the widespread revulsion of the British people to, well, people such as Rees-Mogg.
Rees-Mogg, in the elegant dining room of his Grade II-listed mansion, antique furniture, oil paintings (disturbingly many featuring his Moggness himself) with a new Jaguar and nice old Bentley outside, family fortune approaching £100m, double-barrelled, double-breasted, and about to be doubly thumped by Labour and Reform UK, drawled: “Yes, people feel politicians are just completely out of touch.”
Indeed so, but no politician in modern times has put such effort into being so performatively, cruelly and provocatively out of touch as this self-made anachronism. The Conservative Party has produced many “characters” over the years, some with views as outrageous as their manners and high exhibitionism — the late Nicky Fairbairn for one, Sir Gerald Nabarro and Bob Boothby arguably two further examples — but none rose so far and so determinedly as Rees-Mogg during the Tory party’s locust years.
Fittingly, his career started to leak when, in return for his useful support in her leadership campaign, Liz Truss appointed this unlikely figure to be secretary of state for business, energy and industrial strategy. As a climate denier and devout Thatcherite, he was as unsuited to his role as his boss was to being prime minister. He left office when she fell from power; now, he is out of the Commons too.
He spends his time presenting his predictable opinions on GB News and, as here, trying to turn himself into some sort of lovable personality — even a national treasure. Discovery+, a Warner Communications channel, should be ashamed of themselves for whitewashing this impeccably mannered rascal. The Kardashians don’t actively pursue the destruction of the welfare state and wish to establish an elective dictatorship. Rees-Mogg does. That’s the difference in reality between these two series.
Do not be deceived. As one of his frustrated former constituents says in the show, Rees-Mogg is a nasty, dangerous man. He is a performative Roman Catholic who has built a silly pretend-ancient family chapel in a shed but who goes far beyond the church’s teachings by advocating a ban on abortion in absolutely all circumstances. His all-too-public religiosity led him to break lockdown rules in 2021, travelling to worship in one of the very few remaining churches which practice the Latin mass. It’s a very beautiful thing, the old rite, but surely not worth endangering the lives of others. I think Jesus himself would have stayed home, protected the NHS and saved lives.
Our Lord might also have a more charitable view of the victims of the Grenfell disaster, who Rees-Mogg thought weren’t smart enough to save their own lives, and the Son of God would also be pretty outraged about people having to use so many food banks — a phenomenon Rees-Mogg believes is a testament to the generosity of the British.
Rees-Mogg is a self-consciously traditional conservative with a reverence for the institution of the monarchy. In 2019, he flew to Balmoral to ask the Queen to prorogue — ie, to suspend — parliament. The Supreme Court found this act to be unlawful, null and of no effect, and the advice proffered to Her Majesty by Rees-Mogg and the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, misleading. It was an attempted coup by the Tory cabinet to prevent parliament from exercising its rights over Brexit, and it was doubly dishonourable for Rees-Mogg to say the Supreme Court had attempted a “coup”.
When Johnson, another unreliable faux-toff, got himself into trouble for lying to the House of Commons, which Rees-Mogg affects to revere, Jacob minimised his misdemeanours and demanded loyalty from his colleagues. And yet he spent the best part of a decade making life hell for David Cameron and Theresa May, and played a significant role in ending their premierships through his obdurate extremism over Brexit and his primitive social beliefs.
