Jacob Rees-Mogg

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Jacob Rees-Mogg (born May 24, 1969) is Head of Global Emerging Markets at Lloyd George Management in London and the Conservative candidate for the North East Somerset Parliamentary Constituency in England.

Rees-Mogg is the son of William Rees-Mogg, a former editor of The Times, whilst his sister Annunziata contested Aberavon in the 2005 General Election and is on the Conservatives' 'A List' for future selections. He grew up in Ston Easton and Hinton Blewitt before being educated at Eton and read history at Trinity College, Oxford. He now lives in West Harptree.

Politically Rees-Mogg is on the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party.

Rees-Mogg has courted controversy during previous election campaigns. In 1997 he was Tory candidate for the unwinnable seat of Central Fife, held for many years until 1987 by the strongly anti-monarchist Willie Hamilton. Here, at a time when the Tory government had become intensely unpopular, he was parodied in the press as an Old Etonian and Oxford-educated "young fogey" and "toff" who drove around the campaign trail in his Bentley and took his nanny out canvassing. In 1999, when it was being rumoured that his strong Received Pronunciation accent was working against his chances of being selected for a safe Tory seat, he was defended by letter writers to The Daily Telegraph, one of whom claimed that "an overt form of intimidation exists, directed against anyone who dares to eschew the current, Americanised, mode of behaviour, speech and dress". Rees-Mogg himself stated (in The Sunday Times, May 23, 1999) that "it is rather pathetic to fuss about accents too much", though he then went on to say that "John Prescott's accent certainly stereotypes him as an oaf".^[1]

Rees-Mogg subsequently stood for The Wrekin in Shropshire in 2001, losing to the Labour MP Peter Bradley, who later expressed his view that banning fox hunting was, for him, a class issue. In 1999 he was interviewed by Ali G (aka Sacha Baron Cohen) on the subject of class. The following transcript is a small taste of the result:

Ali G: "So what if you got busy with my sister? You wouldn't like it 'cos she ain't the cleanest girl out there! Um, well it can be arranged. She'd be keen!"

Rees-Mogg: "You speculating on my having a relationship with somebody I've never met and that leading to a child being born and then as to what class it might be is so..uh..far fetched..um..as to be ridiculous. I have no idea what.."

Ali G: "What you think you is too good for my sister?"

Rees-Mogg: "Certainly not. No I wouldn't dream..."

Ali G: "You is. No, you is though. She's is rank. She's nothing. Believe me, even my mum cuss her, tell her she's a slag!"

It is unclear whether any of the controversy surrounding Rees-Mogg has effected his ability to garner votes, and by being selected to fight North East Somerset, which replaces Wansdyke, he is taking on a seat that with the upcoming boundary changes is already a notionally Conservative seat.

In October 2006, when asked for his reaction to a BBC Newsnight survey showing that Tory parliamentary candidates were still drawn predominantly from private education and/or Oxford or Cambridge, Rees-Mogg replied "[T]he Tory party, when it's elected, has to be able to form a government and it's not going to be able to form a government if it has potted plants as candidates simply to make up quotas." He went on, "[w]hen you go to an MP, you want somebody who will write an articulate letter to the social services or whoever it is to get your problem sorted out."^[2]

In January 2007 Rees-Mogg married Helena de Chair, a writer on a trade magazine for the oil industry, daughter of Lady Juliet Tadgell and half-sister of Lord Nicholas Hervey in Canterbury Cathedral. Part of the service included a Roman Catholic mass conducted in Latin by Father Aidan Bellenger the Abbot of Downside Abbey.^[3]