Shouldn’t you be putting your money where your mouth is, Jacob?

CONSIDERING his vociferously pro-Brexit beliefs, you might expect Jacob Rees-Mogg’s firm would put its money where his mouth is and invest in British businesses.

Having wrapped himself in the Union Jack, you certainly wouldn’t expect funds at the firm founded by the MP for North East Somerset to have hundreds of millions of pounds invested in – of all places – Russia.

Rees-Mogg’s firm, Somerset Capital Managment (SCM), could have set up funds to channel some much-needed capital into British engineering companies, high-tech start-ups or the biotech companies researching potential new cures for cancer and other deadly diseases. It could have – but didn’t.

Instead, SCM has parked virtually all the assets overseas, including around £200million in a string of Russian companies at a time when Britain’s relationship with Vladimir Putin’s Kremlin is particularly fraught.

Rees-Mogg takes a bulldog stance on the UK economy, pooh-poohing anyone who suggests it might suffer as a result of Brexit, including the Bank of England’s governor Mark Carney, whose careful analyses he brushes aside.

How curious, then, that the investment firm he set up has virtually no stake at all in British businesses – in a clear signal

of belief stronger growth lies elsewhere.

There is nothing wrong with investing in overseas markets in itself – it’s a common strategy and many City fund managers do exactly that.

The trouble is, Rees-Mogg is not just any old money-man, but a leading politician who has put himself very firmly in the public eye.

So in this case, his firm’s apparent lack of economic patriotism raises eyebrows. It looks suspiciously like a vote of no confidence in UK companies.

Rees-Mogg’s media handlers say that he does not make the investment decisions at SCM.

So what? He cannot shrug off moral responsibility for the firm’s holdings so easily.

He may not directly manage money, but he is a co-founder, a major shareholder and earned around £180,000 last year from the firm, while serving as an MP. That does not put him in a position to wash his hands of its investment policy.

Whether Rees-Mogg likes it or not, we no longer live in the 18th Century but the 21st.

Nowadays, the public expects institutions and politicians to invest in line with the principles they proclaim.

Which is precisely why it looks so jarring for a Rees-Mogg firm to be backing Moscow ahead of Britain.