Member News
By Sam Macrory - 29th November 2010
Committed to civil liberties, amenable to the Big Society and enthusiastic about coalition government, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s views are chiming with the times.
Conversations with my family were very political, and political figures were around us as I was growing up. The first prime minister I met was Ted Heath, when I was about three years old. My father was visiting him at Chequers, and we were all invited in for tea. I remember being given a Garibaldi biscuit. I was very happy at Eton, and I enjoyed it thoroughly.
I was involved in the 1979 election at school, when I stood jointly with Jason Steen, Anthony Steen’s son, as the Conservative candidate. My family lived in Smith Square, so I went into 32 Smith Square, the Conservative Party headquarters, and got every sticker and badge that you possibly could and handed them out to the 8- to 13-year-old electorate. They duly voted Conservative.
I spent a lot of time at the Oxford Union and with the Oxford University Conservative Association, so I probably did less history than I ought to have done. In a way I’m very lucky that the two things that have been my great interests in life, politics and finance, have ended up being careers. I have been investing since I was very young and it was an obvious profession for me to go into. I’ve still got my own business that I set up with some colleagues a few years ago.
I first stood for Parliament in 1997. I was standing in a Scottish constituency and I thought there was a very strong argument to make about the Union. There was something to be said and something to be done. Did I realistically think I was going to win Central Fife? No, of course not, but I thought I owed it to the people of Central Fife to campaign as if it was a marginal seat, and we put out more leaflets and spent more money than any other party in Central Fife in that election campaign.
I thought that the Wrekin was a seat that the Conservatives were very likely to win in 2001, but it became clear before the election that we weren’t making the progress that I thought we would. We were pretending that we could win and we all knew perfectly well that this wasn’t going to happen. One would always do things differently.
I wouldn’t classify my interview with Ali G a mistake. It was before his first interviews had ever been broadcast, so nobody knew who he was. When Channel 4 wrote to me, they mentioned an interviewer called Ali Gupta. It was all perfectly serious, and I would not have done a silly interview had I known that that’s what it was.
Politicians aren’t comedians, and it is a great mistake for politicians to think that they are.I certainly wanted to stand in 2005, and I applied for countless seats. One wishes things will work out as you want them to on the day, but life isn’t like that. Instead I’ve ended up with something much preferable to what I would otherwise have got, after being selected to stand in my home seat.
I focused on North East Somerset during the campaign; I wasn’t trying to get a national profile. The only one that I had acquired during previous campaigns was more by accident. Fortunately nothing like Ali G came up in 2010, and I would have been more cautious if it had.
Of course I wasn’t asked to stand as ‘Jake Mogg’, and the whole thing about my sister standing as ‘Nancy Mogg’ was a joke anyway. She has recently got married, and I was quite pleased to point out that her husband had succeeded in doing what David Cameron couldn’t do, and that is changing her name. She is now Annunziata Glanville.
Political parties are always reinventing themselves and saying they are becoming more modern. Robert Peel modernised the Conservative Party, and so did Disraeli. I don’t object to the concept of modernising political parties, it’s just what happens. I’m very clear about this: the Conservative Party should have able people within it regardless of their background, but it should be a matter of ability rather than a quota limit. I’m very supportive of David Cameron, so I should regret being his worst nightmare [as has been written], if that were the case.
I think the coalition has been a great success, and is able to do more than a small Conservative majority could have done. The coalition is attractive, but I’ve never really been a great believer that the Conservative Party is that unattractive a party. I don’t agree with the jargon that the Lib Dems have helped ‘de-toxify’ the Tories either, because I don’t think the Tories were ever particularly toxic.
The electorate expect the Conservatives to be an efficient party that is good at the business of government, and they expect the Labour Party to be full of nice cuddly people who are a bit useless. I think the last 13 years has proved them to be right on at least half of that – they weren’t so cuddly. We now have a serious minded government that is taking difficult decisions and is willing to do the right thing rather than what is right for the next day’s papers.
I thought all the Cool Britannia stuff was prize junk. I don’t think it served the country’s interests in any way. I’m not the least bit interested in whether pop stars are invited to Downing Street. I think it is so trivial and was indicative of a boom time era when government had more money than sense. If that’s an old-fashioned value then yes, I’m all for old-fashioned values. The core of my values are the liberties of the British people and trying to protect them, and sometimes that’s old fashioned and sometimes it’s very modern. It depends where you are in the political cycle.
I expect the coalition to continue after 2015. I know I’m in a minority on this, but my view is that we will fight the next election as a coalition, because if we’ve made a success of it – which is what I expect – then it would be completely illogical to oppose, for example, Nick Clegg in Sheffield Hallam. What would the Conservative candidate say? “We’ve had this wonderful government which has done all these brilliant things, but it would have been that much better if we hadn’t had this fellow here messing about as deputy prime minister.” No, it is completely the opposite. If we govern as a coalition then I think we should fight the next election as a coalition – and I’m not exactly on the left wing of our party.
I think, in truth, I am a Peelite, in that I believe in free-trade, sound money and the state being less onerous upon the subject than it has been in recent years. I think Margaret Thatcher was a Peelite too, though perhaps with slightly authoritarian overtones.
I like the Big Society concept and find it very easy to understand. So does everyone I speak to in North East Somerset. People don’t find it easy to understand within the M25 belt, where nobody ever speaks to their neighbour.
Any village in my constituency has a village fete each year which is brought together by a handful of people who are community-minded, while other groups within the community do other things right across the year. Most MPs from rural constituencies find the Big Society a very attractive concept because it is what makes their societies tick. It would help in the towns, particularly the big cities, if they had done more of that.
I read a good deal, and I enjoy cricket as long as I don’t have to play. I was quite old really to get married, but I have found having children to be the most extraordinary delight and pleasure, much more than I thought it would be. I think I said that I would like to be prime minister when I was 70, but that was when I was a nine year-old, so I’m not going to hold to what I said as an infant. I’ve achieved my ambitions. I represent my home county in Parliament and that is the greatest honour and most exciting thing to do. That’s my ambition sated.
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