REVEALED: Tory plot to stop ‘posh and white’ Rees-Mogg becoming an MP
DAVID CAMERON’S Conservative Party officials tried to block Jacob Rees-Mogg from entering Parliament at the 2010 Election because he was too white and ‘posh’, it can be revealed today.
A new biography of Commons Leader Mr Rees-Mogg by former Tory deputy chairman Michael Ashcroft describes how officials in Mr Cameron’s Tory HQ kept Mr Rees-Mogg off their ‘A-list’ of candidates, introduced to try to boost the number of female, ethnic minority and state-educated MPs in the party.
Lord Ashcroft’s book, Jacob’s Ladder, which is serialised in The Mail on Sunday today, describes how Mr Rees-Mogg foiled the efforts of Mr Cameron’s aides by using a loophole which allowed applicants to circumvent the A-list if they could be classified as a local.
Mr Rees-Mogg applied for selection in North East Somerset, the area in which he spent his childhood as one of five children of William Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times.
Local constituency agent Margaret Brewer was told by HQ to remove him from the shortlist but Mr Rees-Mogg was reprieved when former Conservative Party chairman Michael Ancram – the Marquess of Lothian – was brought in to help filter the candidates.
Mr Ancram ‘did not believe in the merits of the A-list’ and was able to ‘ensure that Rees-Mogg was given fair consideration’, the books says. Ms Brewer is said to have received repeated calls from party leaders who were ‘warning her and other local representatives not to select him’. Ms Brewer said: ‘It was made quite clear that [Jacob] was not what they wanted in a candidate.’
A source close to Mr Rees-Mogg describes it as a ‘concerted campaign’ to keep him off the candidate list.
After Mr Ancram’s intervention, Mr Rees-Mogg was able to win selection and secured the seat at the 2010 Election. He is now playing a key role in the bitter parliamentary battles being fought by Boris Johnson’s Government.
Lord Ashcroft writes: ‘The highly controversial A-list, aimed at widening the diversity of parliamentary candidates, [had] a strong emphasis on women being key to electoral success. Rees-Mogg’s status as a white, privately educated, middle-class male made him particularly vulnerable in this brave new world.’
The author quotes former Tory MP Mark Reckless, a friend of Mr Rees-Mogg, as saying: ‘The A-list had an exemption for local candidates. I think it was intended to reward local hard-working activists, or not discriminate against them, and Jacob managed to use that as his side door through.
‘It was a real surprise to David Cameron and George Osborne because I don’t think they’d anticipated it would be used in such a way or by someone who was nationally known.’ The modernising frenzy launched by Mr Cameron also swept up Mr Rees-Mogg’s sister Annunziata, who made an unsuccessful bid to win the Somerton and Frome seat at the same Election. As The Mail on Sunday disclosed at the time, Mr Cameron asked Ms Rees-Mogg if she would ‘de-toff’ her name to ‘Nancy Mogg’ – but she flatly refused.
The book also reveals details of Mr Rees-Mogg’s personal life, including how lots of female students had crushes on him at Oxford, his devotion to his nanny Veronica, and the fast-track courtship of his wife Helena, with whom he now has six children.
Yesterday, Tory rebel Sir Nicholas Soames called Mr Rees-Mogg an ‘absolute fraud’ and said that he wanted to kick him ‘firmly in the a***’ after he lay down on the front bench in the Commons on Tuesday.
The veteran parliamentarian said in an interview with The Times that it was ‘bloody bad manners’ and ‘repulsive’.
Sir Nicholas, 71, Winston Churchill’s grandson and one of 21 rebels stripped of the party whip after voting to block a No Deal Brexit, said: ‘He is in serious danger of believing his own shtick.
‘He is an absolute fraud, he is a living example of what a moderately cut double-breasted suit and a decent tie can do with an ultra-posh voice and a bit of ginger stuck up his a***.’
Sir Nicholas announced last week that he will quit as an MP at the next Election.