Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has been crowned the most popular Conservative backbencher in an annual survey by a leading Tory publication.
The former business secretary pipped Miriam Cates, a rising star from the 2019 intake, and Suella Braverman in the contest.
He won the most votes from readers of Conservative Home, which is often described as the Tory grassroots bible.
The fun thing is that Jacob’s not really a toff. Plays one very well indeed of course, but it is rather a play. Pops was a very bright lad on the make and did very well indeed at it. But it takes a few generations to create a proper toff in the English class system.
Having a personality and being capable of coherent thought gave JRM an unfair advantage against the majority of wet Tory twats.
Met his pater in the 1980s when I occasionally did temp work at the Arts Council of GB on Piccadilly. Quite an avuncuilar chap, not really posh as I recall but obviously worth a few bob.
Met him a couple of tims myself. He was also rather helpful when I first started blogging – weird but there we are. Think it was helped by the fact that only Jacob went to Eton. Emma and Tom, two siblings, were at Downside with me.
My DiL stood against him as the Green Party PPC when she was at Bath University, or just after, and despite herself she found she quite liked him when she met him in radio studios and at other events. She said he was polite and the only candidate who took time to talk to her and seemed genuinely interested in her.
There was at one point a muttering that I should stand against him for Ukip. Would have been fun really.
Mr Smith, personally, I’d be rather more critical of the “wet Tory twats”. JRM’s least advantage was that he could walk and blink at the same time. The wet Tory twats have all the abilities of a drunken retarded amoeba who has had more fentanyl than George Floyd…
“The fun thing is that Jacob’s not really a toff.”
Depends what you mean by ‘toff’. The Moggs have been country gentry and clergy in a corner of Somerset for well over 300 years. JRM is married to Helena Anne Beatrix Wentworth Fitzwilliam de Chair, the only child of Somerset de Chair and his fourth wife Lady Juliet Tadgell.
JRM is polite and shows no signs of malice. He is completely authentic, an increasingly rare quality in politicians.
The fact that the harridans Jess Phillips and Mhairi Black have both spoken kindly about him (and you can count the other Conservative MPs to receive that endorsement on the fingers of one hand) speaks volumes and suggests to me that the public at large would have been far more receptive to Mogg in high office than the media were so desperate to imply.
Too bad we’ll never find out but I still hold hopes of his being appointed Speaker.
My worst fear is this thoroughly decent and accomplished man being defeated next year by some spotty intersectional Lib Dem.
John, one would hope that his constituents would vote for the man rather than the party.
Too bad we’ll never find out but I still hold hopes of his being appointed Speaker.
No doubt Labour will stitch it up again next time its the Tories’ turn, in the same way they brought us that poisoned dwarf Bercow.