Why Rees-Mogg is tipped as next Tory PM ... and what it could mean for the border
Kim Bielenberg on the rise of the maverick who may have Northern Ireland’s future in his hands
The Conservative MP Jacob Rees-Mogg is the sort of chap whose idea of being casual is to wear a tweed jacket and tie at weekends, rather than his normal double-breasted pinstripe suit.
The politician peppers his conversations with Latin phrases, drives around in a 1968 Bentley and, as the father of six children, proudly boasts that he has never condescended to change a nappy in his life.
“Nanny would not think it a good idea for me to be changing nappies,” the 48-year-old explained, defying modern conventions of parental political correctness. “She thinks it is her job.”
The nanny concerned, Veronica Crook, seems to loom large in the life of this marble-mouthed maverick. She looked after him as a child and then he used her services himself when he became a father.
When he first stood for Parliament unsuccessfully in Scotland two decades ago, he went canvassing with Crook, who drove him around the constituency in his mother’s Mercedes.
Until recently, the MP for Somerset North-East could be casually dismissed as a cosseted cartoon aristocrat. After all, he was playing second fiddle to a more chummy old Etonian chap, Boris Johnson.
But now, the commentariat is beginning to take the claims of Rees-Mogg to high office more seriously, as the leader of the arch-Brexiteers.
He is chairman of an influential committee of MPs campaigning against any attempt to water down the UK’s commitment to telling the EU to get stuffed.
With the Conservative Party in disarray over Brexit and Theresa May teetering on the brink, Rees-Mogg is the bookies’ favourite to be the next Tory prime minister. Preposterous? Is it any more outlandish a prospect than Donald Trump as President of the United States?
The prospect of a new age of Moggocracy cannot be ignored, and it is now conceivable that the future of the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic could be in the hands of the man leading the British charge against the EU.
Recently, one newspaper described him as the “MP for the 18th century whose time may have come”.
That is a version of ‘tiocfaidh ar la’ that nobody, least of all the Shinners, really bargained for.
With Sinn Fein and the DUP failing to form a power-sharing executive, Northern Ireland may be facing direct rule by Mogg.
While Theresa May has struggled to make up her mind over which form Brexit takes, he is unambiguous in pushing for the UK to leave any kind of customs union or single market.
Unlike ministers on the Conservative benches, the backbencher does not sully his public utterances with any hint of compromise.
Before Britain ever decided to quit the EU, he declared the plans of Brussels eurocrats to be the “work of the devil”.
In a characteristic flourish, he used the longest word ever recorded in the Houses of Parliament when lambasting the EU judiciary: “Let me indulge in the f lo cc in auci ni hi li pi li fi cation of EU judges.” He later defined the word as “the action or habit of estimating as worthless”.
Born into the upper classes as the son of William Rees-Mogg, editor of The Times, Jacob was reading the Financial Times at the age of eight and used a £50 inheritance from a departed uncle to invest in the stock market.
His now legendary nanny had the task of phoning his broker.
Aged 11, he had already made decent profits from his investments and even turned up at shareholders’ meetings to give speeches.
In an interview as a teenager, the precocious Etonian told of his ambition to be a millionaire at 20, a multi-millionaire at 40 and prime minister at 70.
Rees-Mogg once recalled how he’d been sent out of class twice: the first time for wearing a large Tory rosette on his lapel, and a second time after arguing with a teacher about the infallibility of the Pope.
These infractions show the most important cornerstones of the Rees-Mogg philosophy — true blue-blooded Conservatism and devout Catholicism.
Asked if he would ever join Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party, the man elected as an MP in 2010, replied: “No! Never, never, never! I was born a Conservative and I shall die a Conservative.”
Many of Rees-Mogg’s views chime with those of social conservatives in Ireland who campaigned against gay marriage and now want to stop the repeal of the Eighth Amendment.
“I am a Catholic and I take the teachings of the Catholic Church seriously,” he has said.
Outlining his opposition to same-sex marriage, he said: “Marriage is a sacrament, and the decision of what is a sacrament lies with the Church, not with Parliament.”
The Church’s teachings on faith and morals were “authoritative”, he said, but added it was not for him to judge others.
However, he said he was completely opposed to abortion, arguing that it was “morally indefensible”.
“Life is sacrosanct and begins at the point of conception,” he has argued.
Placing himself outside the spectrum of mainstream British opinion, he said he was opposed to abortion in cases of rape: “A great wrong has been created at the point of a rape. The question is, does a second wrong make it any better?”
Stories abound about his privileged upbringing. Some of them are inevitably apocryphal. He denied that he once paid a boy at Eton to shield him with an umbrella from the rain on a cross-country run.
But he confirmed a story that his nanny and his maid did take turns to shield his neck from the sun with a book at the Glyndebourne opera festival. And he validated a report that, along with the King of Spain, he has exclusive access to an upstairs loo at Claridges.
The Irish government will no doubt fear that a Mogg premiership will inevitably lead to the border being closed between north and south in a hard Brexit situation, but his own position on the border is quite simple — do nothing.
He told a Conservative event in the autumn that post-Brexit Britain would not have to put up border posts stretching from Carlingford Lough to Lough Foyle.
“I don’t care if a few hundredweight of beef is smuggled across the Irish border. It will make no odds to the British economy. We have no obligation to put any border up. Full stop,” he said.
“Challenge the EU to do it. I just don’t believe that they will, and I don’t believe that the Irish will agree to them doing it.”
At the same time, PM Mogg will not have any truck with the notion of a United Ireland. He gives his party its full title as the Con-
servative and Unionist Party and recently declared: “Northern Ireland is as much a part of the United Kingdom as Somerset.”
If Mogg moves into 10 Downing Street, he may have to patch up some differences with Leo Varadkar.
Last month, Rees-Mogg took exception to remarks by the Taoiseach. Varadkar expressed regret that the UK was leaving the EU and said he was conscious of “British veterans, very brave people, who fought on the beaches of France, not just for Britain but also for European democracy and for European values”.
Rees-Mogg took a swipe at the Republic’s Second World War record. “Mr Varadkar forgets Ireland was neutral during the war, which implies it had no interest in Europe, and Eamon de Valera signed a book of condolence at the German Embassy in Dublin on the death of Hitler.
“Perhaps if Mr Varadkar knew his own country’s undistinguished wartime history better, his views on our history would be more informed.”
In order to be chosen as leader if Theresa May is deposed, he would first have to be chosen by fellow MPs to be one of the candidates who are then elected by members of the party. Professor Philip Cowley, political scientist at Queen Mary University in London, predicted: “If he stands in any forthcoming leadership contest, (and) he gets through to the last two, he’ll walk it.”
There’s a fear of a hard border, but his position is quite simple — do nothing