Mogg’s new street ...and centuries of political intrigue
JACOB REES-MOGG’s new power base sits in a historic quarter of ‘Old Westminster’ which has been thick with plotters for centuries.
The Somerset MP paid £5.625 million for the property in Cowley Street earlier this year, part funded by a mortgage from the Queen’s bank, Coutts & Co.
It became vacant after proBrexit former Tory deputy chairman Lord Ashcroft, who had been renting the building to house his varied political and business operations, moved out.
The five-storey 18th Century building is closer to Parliament than Downing Street, lying just 390 yards from the Commons. It is also a mere 500 yards from Tory campaign HQ and only 100 yards from the Westminster studios of the main broadcasters.
Houses and offices in this road are traditionally fitted with the division bells which summon MPs to vote, as they are near enough for MPs to reach the Commons chamber within the required eight minutes. It means Mr Rees-Mogg will have the luxury of being able to relax at home between late-night votes.
Mr Rees-Mogg, who has six children with his wife Helena, is expected to move into the house at the end of August, after he has finished a refurbishment. Local planning documents show it includes the installation of surprisingly modern touches such as ‘walk-on rooflights’ over his basement.
The estate agent which advertised the house for £6 million purred about the potential for ‘five bedrooms, four reception rooms, four bathrooms, and significant family kitchen’, concluding: ‘This would make a substantial and desirable London home.’ Cowley Street is where Prime Minister John Major based his campaign in 1995, when he quit as Tory leader and invited MPs to challenge him, telling Eurosceptic opponents to ‘put up or shut up’. Michael Portillo was revealed as a plotter after he was caught installing phone lines in a secret campaign HQ in Lord North Street – a one-minute walk away – to challenge Major if the contest went to a second round.
In the 2001 Tory leadership battle, the same Lord North Street house was used by the victorious Iain Duncan Smith.
Mr Rees-Mogg’s house is also just feet from the building which the Liberal Democrats used as their HQ until 2011.
Lord North Street has been described as ‘reeking of political intrigue’, hosting political salons since the days of Disraeli. It is where Winston Churchill went to plot against Neville Chamberlain in 1940; and in the 1970s, former Labour Prime Minister Sir Harold Wilson claimed that his townhouse at 5 Lord North Street had been bugged by MI5.
Now a new chapter of intrigues appears to be opening up.