The Rees-mogg attitude of taking Opposition hot air lying down

He only did it to annoy because he knew it teases. It worked very well. Jacob Rees-mogg, lounging in his doublebreasted lounge suit across the green front-bench leather, was harangued from across the chamber on Tuesday night by Caroline Lucas, the Green MP.

“His body language throughout this evening has been so contemptuous of this House and of the people,” she scolded, as though he had deliberately sat upon a rare orchid in a garden of remembrance for vulnerable children.

She should know better, for Mr Rees-mogg was behaving in a traditional manner for the Commons. Perhaps that is really what she did not like. I shouldn’t think she much likes Hon and Rt Hon members going “Hear-ar-ar-ar-ar-ar”, like Newfoundland dogs playfully growling as they mouth Pedigree Dentastix.

Mr Rees-mogg has been called by some wit the “member for the 18thcentury”, but I feel he’d have been more at home in about 1880, when Gladstone was prime minister. Then he could have tipped the brim of his tall hat over his eyes as he pretended to take no notice of the nonsense droning over him from the Opposition benches.

That was the thing to do in the 1880s. I bet Joseph Chamberlain, orchid in his well-cut buttonhole, lolled for England on the Treasury benches as president of the Board of Trade. Gladstone himself was generally as near supine as makes no difference, shoulders pressed into the rather plumper leather available before the Commons was bombed in the Blitz.

Today, a semi-recumbent posture gets up the nose of those who think MPS should not behave like members of Pop (properly, “The Eton Society”), sporting new waistcoats of their own design. It so happens that Mr Rees-mogg was at Eton; Boris Johnson was in Pop.

But that is not strictly the point.

The daily comportment of members of Parliament within living memory was that of a man at his club. This is now seen almost as a hate crime. It once seemed that the main advantage of being appointed to Cabinet was that you could sit on the front bench and put your feet on the despatch-box table. It didn’t annoy the Opposition much; it merely showed you at ease in your own House. I used to feel sorry for short members of James Callaghan’s administration because they could only reach the table by extreme efforts of stretching, lest their upper bodies plopped off the bench. This was not held contemptuous of anyone, or rude in any way.

Some things definitely are rude in the House. One is clapping. That was put down even by Mr Speaker Bercow (who, in pursuit of modernity has designed his own outfit of schoolmaster’s gown and snazzy tie in place of the wig, breeches and buckled shoes that God intended). When SNP MPS wanted to show approval in unfamiliar Westminster, they clapped. Mr Bercow said: “I would invite them to show some respect for the traditions of this Chamber of the House of Commons.”

Caroline Lucas was once ticked off by the chair for wearing a T-shirt (T-shirts are not allowed) bearing a slogan (slogans on dress are not allowed). That certainly was contemptuous, though done with the greatest sincerity.

What has annoyed some Telegraph readers, driven in these strange times to watch Parliament on television, is the habit MPS have of playing with their phones. Very contemptuous. They’ll be swigging from bottles of water next.