Rees-Mogg fist fight
Punch-up as MP’s campus speech is interrupted by masked activists
JACOB Rees-Mogg was caught up in a brawl last night after seven masked protesters burst in while he was giving a talk at a university.
The Tory MP stepped into the middle of the fracas in a bid to calm the crowd down before security guards arrived to remove those involved.
Later, Mr Rees-Mogg said he was ‘absolutely fine’ – and revealed that it was the first fight he had ever been involved in.
The 48-year-old MP for North East Somerset had just started speaking to students at UWE Bristol when the masked protesters reportedly stormed in. Two groups then started shoving each other.
In a video of the incident shared online, a man with shoulder-length blond hair is the first to be hit and a friend, wearing sunglasses, pushes the MP to aim a punch at the blond man’s opponent. Mr Rees-Mogg then tries to help separate the youngsters.
A student at the talk said: ‘A couple of minutes into Jacob Rees-Mogg’s speech about seven masked protesters came in from the back, some were wearing hoods they started shouting “racist”, “bigot” and “how can you work for a fascist government?”. Rees-Mogg tried to speak to them and it quietened down for a bit, security removed some.’
Chloe Kaye, 19, who posted a video of the scuffles on Twitter, wrote: ‘A huge amount of (physical) violence at a Jacob Rees-Mogg speech.’
Miss Kaye, a politics and international relations student at nearby Bristol University, added: ‘[The MP] was trying to reason with them but they just kept shouting incredibly the whole at process. calm him. He throughout remained
for ‘It security took around to come. ten minutes They were eventually escorted out.
‘While I don’t necessarily agree with what he says, I wanted to hear what he had to say. I was talking to people behind me who were Jeremy Corbyn fans and even they were disappointed by it all. After they were escorted out the building, everyone was clapping and cheering for Jacob Rees-Mogg. Eventually the talk got back on track and continued as normal.’
Last night Mr Rees-Mogg said he stepped in to prevent any violence and to stop the event descending into chaos. ‘I’ve never been in a physical confrontation complete The leading weed,’ Brexiteer at he all, said. I am told a the Daily Telegraph: ‘They shouted at me but they weren’t going to hit me. ‘They didn’t want to talk about politics, they just wanted to stop the event. I’ m of the sticks and stones school of thought.’
He told MailOnline: ‘Some people came into the room and wanted to shout down the meeting but they did not succeed.
‘Lawful protest is part of our democratic system. But these people had no intention to debate and did not wish to have a conversation.’
Mr Rees-Mogg added that while it was frustrating for the 300 people at the event that his speech was delayed, he was not shocked by the interruption. He added: ‘A similar situation happened in tried People Manchester to feel shout strongly when me people down. about political issues and some respond by trying to engage in political debate while others shout.’ It is not known who was involved in the fight and whether they were students. The event was organised by the university’s politics and international relations society and the MP went on to speak for almost an hour. Mr Rees-Mogg had been scheduled to talk about his life as a politician and conservative principles, but after the fracas he changed the topic to cover the importance of free speech. Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner tweeted last night: ‘My politics are not those of Jacob Rees-Mogg ... however I utterly condemn the behaviour of those who tried to attack him.’
‘I am a complete weed’