‘Amazing rise of Javid makes me proud to be British’
When Jacob Rees-mogg reflects on the “hostile environment” policy for illegal immigrants which operated under Theresa May and the treatment of the Windrush generation, he does not hold back.
“It’s a horrible policy,” he says in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.
“My fundamental view is that there is a complete equality of Britishness. It doesn’t matter if you arrived yesterday, or if your family has been living quietly in Somerset for hundreds of years. It’s where the hostile environment policy was fundamentally unbritish. In this country we are not used to demanding people show us their papers.”
For Mr Rees-mogg, the rise of Sajid Javid from son of an immigrant bus driver to the first Asian Home Secretary epitomises the best of the Tory Party and the best of Britain.
Does he see Mr Javid as potential leadership material? Mr Rees-mogg chooses his words carefully, but still can’t quite resist endorsing him. “I would hate to put the evil eye on him by recommending him,” he said. “But he’s a formidably able man. If you are talking about some date in the 2030s when Theresa May has decided she has had enough, then he is definitely in that group [of potential leaders].”
As head of the increasingly vocal 60-strong Eurosceptic European Research Group, Mr Rees-mogg’s words carry added weight.
His group could hold the fate of the Prime Minister in its hands – it has more than enough members to trigger a leadership contest – and play a pivotal role in deciding her successor.
Mr Rees-mogg said there was “no desire in the Conservative Party” for a change of leadership and the Prime Minister “deserves from Tory MPS and supporters trust in what she’s doing”.
However, he is fulsome is his praise for Mr Javid. For many colleagues, the new Home Secretary is still a deeply contentious figure. They are still yet to forgive him for flirting with voting to leave EU before backing Remain.
Mr Rees-mogg, however, has no such qualms. “We may want to control immigration, but the people who come here are fabulous. Having someone like Sajid in the Home Office is good for Brexit.” Asked about Mr Javid’s position on Brexit, he said: “I tend not to hold things against people. I’m not critical of the choices he made then.”
At the weekend Lord Adonis, a pro-european Labour peer, tweeted a cartoon of Mr Javid in which he was depicted as wanting to deport his own parents. He subsequently apologised and deleted the tweet. Mr Rees-mogg is withering in his assessment of the cartoon.
“I’m afraid Lord Adonis is so extreme in his hostility to Brexit that he cannot find a barrel without
‘I would hate to put the evil eye on him by recommending him. But he’s a formidably able man’
scraping the bottom of it,” he said. “It was clearly racist, in the same way the mural that Jeremy Corbyn commented on was obviously anti-semitic.”
While hailing from the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party, Mr Rees-mogg’s views on migration are fundamentally liberal – more in line with those of Boris Johnson and Michael Gove than Theresa May.
He believes that the EU referendum was a vote for controlling migration, rather than pulling up the drawbridge. Mr Javid, he believes, is a shining example of the benefits of migration.
“If you think about what his father did, how hard he must have worked, what he inspired his children to do, it’s almost a model of Conservatism,” he said “It’s brave, it’s never making the easy choice, it’s working the extra hour to help your children get ahead. It’s believing in aspiration and doing well through your own efforts. His son is now one of the great office holders of state. That is just amazing. Gosh, it should make us proud to be British, that this is possible in this country.”
For Mr Rees-mogg, his focus is now very much squarely on ensuring that Brexit remains on track.
At the weekend Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, appeared to resurrect Project Fear by warning that thousands of jobs would be at risk if the Government abandoned the customs union option.
“Project Fear is so utterly craven and defeatist, it is the attitude of managing decline which is so prevalent among the older establishment,” Mr Rees-mogg said. “The customs partnership is just membership of the customs union and the single market by another name.”
He has a message for pro-european Tory MPS who are preparing to rebel against the Government in a bid to keep Britain in the customs union.
“Any MP who stood on the Conservative manifesto and did not say I don’t agree with our policy on leaving the customs union and single market has an obligation to consider the manifesto very carefully and the commitments they may have made to their constituents very carefully,” he said. “They need to think very carefully about whether they might have misled their voters. They must consider maintaining good faith with their voters.
“Do people feel comfortable saying one thing to their voters in June 2017 and doing something different in May 2018?”
Mr Rees-mogg also raised the possibility of a Boris Johnson premiership. He said that if the Foreign Secretary was in charge of the Brexit negotiations he would be “much, much more aggressive” with Brussels than Mrs May – but that this could play into the Prime Minister’s hands as the EU would be inclined to give her a better deal to avoid a Eurosceptic Tory leader taking over.
He compared the Prime Minister to King Solomon of Israel, who in the Bible was less tough in his approach to his subjects than his son and successor, King Rehoboam.
Mr Rees-mogg said: “I think one of Theresa May’s strength in negotiation is that she is Solomon to Rehoboam. That is to say my father [Solomon] scourged you with whips, I [Rehoboam] will scourge you with scorpions.
“The EU knows if they don’t support and help Theresa May to get a deal, there is the risk of having somebody much, much more aggressive, which they don’t want.”