Mind your language!
Rees-Mogg’s hardline grammar laws for staff
a BaSTION of convention and propriety, he’s been nicknamed the Honourable Member for the early 20th century.
So it’s no surprise that Jacob ReesMogg – who has only been in the Cabinet for a few days – is already giving staff strict instructions... on their use of English.
The Eton-educated MP, given the job of Leader of the Commons by Boris Johnson, has handed all workers in his Westminster office a style guide. It includes a long list of banned words and phrases – and even orders officials to use imperial measurements.
Mr Rees-Mogg insists that all nontitled men are given the suffix Esq, while the phrase ‘no longer fit for purpose’ has been, well... deemed no longer fit for purpose.
Staff are given a lesson in the correct way to use full stops – and woe betide anyone who puts too many ‘I’s in their correspondence. Using the phrase ‘I am pleased to learn’ is likely to be met with withering disapproval from a politician who’s rarely seen in anything other than an immaculate double breasted suit.
In a call for accuracy, he tells staff: ‘CHECK your work.’ The guidance was drawn up by the MP’s North East Somerset constituency team years ago, but has now been shared with officials in his new role.
The Commons Leader’s office would not comment on the leaked document, which was obtained by ITV News.
Mr Rees-Mogg, 50, first entered Parliament in 2010. a stickler for formal dress and tradition, many observers wryly note that he appears to come from another time.
a devout Roman Catholic, the Tory MP called his sixth child Sixtus – the name shared with five Popes.
His other children’s full names include alfred Wulfric Leyson Pius, Thomas Wentworth Somerset Dunstan, Peter Theodore alphege and anselm Charles Fitzwilliam. Despite his growing family, the Oxford-educated MP has admitted to never changing a nappy – because he is not a ‘modern man’, adding: ‘The nanny does it brilliantly.’
as for errant staff who blot their copy book with sloppy grammar, perhaps the Old Etonian will deploy a suitably Victorian punishment... and make them wear a dunce’s hat.