He has never been sozzled. word) doesn’t let his toddler
JACOB Rees- Mogg, the bookies’ favourite to succeed Theresa May as Tory leader, has 100 elegant ways of avoiding saying he has his sights set on No 10. But his no-nonsense nanny Veronica Crook may just have let the cat out of the bag. ‘ He would make an excellent Prime Minister,’ she said without hesitation, when we bumped into her after interviewing the man whose nappies she used to change.
Miss Crook had come to the Tory MP’s Westminster office so that he could drive her to Gournay Court, his pile in Somerset, where she is nanny to his six children, just as she was to Jacob nearly 50 years ago. ‘He was as good as gold as a little boy and he hasn’t changed a bit,’ she said.
The popularity among dukes to dustmen of the languid Old Etonian Brexiteer who has stepped straight out of a Victorian ‘Spy’ cartoon has taken most by surprise.
Blair, Clinton, Obama and Cameron all vied to be tieless and trendy. Rees- Mogg, wit h hi s double- breasted suits and Latin quotations, does the opposite.
Ask him who is the England football manager: ‘Not a clue.’ Name a rap star: ‘No idea.’ Does he ever eff and blind? ‘No, never. The worst I say is damn. I’m trying to bring the term blighter back into fashion.’
With no Cabinet responsibility and millions in the bank from a successful City career, he can afford to speak his mind. And does. For all his politesse, he fires off militant letters to Mrs May telling her what he will and won’t accept in Brexit talks.
Six months ago, Rees-Mogg was still a novelty act. Now many at Westminster believe that if he got to the last stage of the Conservative leadership contest, whereby party members choose between the top two MPs, Rees-Mogg would steal the show. He gave new and surprising insights into his personal and political life in his interview with this newspaper in which he:
Issued a heartfelt new call for the ban on Catholics becoming monarchs to be scrapped;
Confessed he got away with
Who is the England manager? I haven’t a clue