With a reshuffle underway, attention is dominated by the senior cabinet posts. With a new Prime Minister the anticipation of sweeping changes is all the greater. Efforts will be made to see a pattern – to form a conclusion of the new direction the country is heading in.
For backbench MPs there is a rather broader interest. Many will be hoping for their first taste of executive power. It might be humble and obscure – Under Secretary of State for something or other. Yet for the backbencher, it offers a chance to make a difference to our island story.
Few Tory MPs can be more deserving of preferment than Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has represented North East Somerset since 2010.
It is often asserted that the standard of Parliamentary oratory has declined. Yet Rees-Mogg, although just one of the Commons’ 650 members, has undertaken a personal mission to reverse any such trend. His contributions have combined being erudite and relevant. Certainly he manages to entertain, but his jokes are a means to an end. Scorn can be the most powerful of political weapons and Rees-Mogg uses it to devastating effect – all the more so for it coming from such a well-mannered and well-spoken practitioner.
There is a fearlessness derived from a mastery of detail, and a clearly thought-through outlook. Thus, while some Brexiteers might avoid a fight with Bank of England Governor Mark Carney, Jacob, a highly successful fund manager, is up for a ruck.
“Did the Bank of England consider whether it was in the public interest to risk its reputation for impartiality?”, Rees-Mogg asked Carney at the Treasury Select Committee. If the Bank of England wouldn’t tell us how to vote in a General Election, why take sides in a referendum? Carney became visibly riled.
Opponents will struggle to catch out Rees-Mogg on points of accuracy. Let us take bananas. This was a subject upon which Boris Johnson became muddled when quoting EU rules. By contrast I recall some years ago Jacob would take every chance to denounce the EU ban on curved bananas. Invariably some Europhile would claim there was no such ban.
At which point Jacob would triumphantly produce from his wallet a piece of paper detailing EU regulation 2257/94 stating that bananas must be “free of abnormal curvature” and should be at least 5.5 inches long.
When MPs debated an EU €185 million programme which includes maintaining an archive for EU documents in Florence, Rees-Mogg raised doubts about how well thumbed the papers will be. “When I was doing my A-levels, I was told that if ever we ran out of something to say when discussing 16th-century history, we should always refer to a report sent by the Venetian ambassador,” he says. “That is because the archives in Venice were so great—so large and comprehensive—that nobody ever went through them all, and therefore if we attributed a view to the Venetian ambassador nobody could tell us that we were wrong.
“In the same way, if we were to visit the Escorial we would find that some of the documents of Philip II of Spain still have on them the sand used to blot the ink, because nobody has looked at them in the many hundreds of years that have passed. I have a feeling that the institute in Florence—this wonderful, glorious, illustrious European institute that is going to educate us so much about the virtues and kindness of the European Union—will find that the sand remains on these documents until scholars yet unborn finally get round to sweeping it off.”
There is a fondness from Rees-Mogg for jokes from the 1840s. (sample: “Why are Tories like walnuts? Because they are troublesome to Peel.”) Yet Rees-Mogg also has the capacity to surprise.
He compared the Coalition Government to the marriage of Bobby Ewing and Pam Barnes. This is a reference to the American TV series Dallas and refers to marriage between feuding families: there were the initial attempts to make it a success, but the long-term tensions remained. An improbable lapse into popular culture. But not affectation.
“Jacob has always been a huge Dallas fan” says his sister, Annunziata.
Years before he became an MP there was a TV interview with Ali G which saw Jacob interviewed about the intricacies of the British class system – responding in unruffled manner despite the tendentious nature of the questions.
Already Rees-Mogg has proved himself one of outstanding Parliamentarians of our age.
As his poshness is unapologetic and combined with generosity of spirit it does not make him unpopular – instead he brightens up a drab political world. While so many politicians come across as frightened rabbits, Rees-Mogg exudes the aura of a man true to himself. He has great talents. Theresa May should put them to full use.