Jacob Rees-Mogg
| The Honourable Jacob Rees-Mogg MP |
|
|---|---|
 |
|
| Member of Parliament for North East Somerset |
|
| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 6 May 2010 |
|
| Preceded by | Constituency Created |
| Majority | 4,914 (9.6%) |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 24 May 1969 Somerset, England, United Kingdom |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Conservative |
| Spouse(s) | Helena de Chair |
| Children | 2 sons, 1 daughter |
| Alma mater | Trinity College, Oxford |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
The Hon. Jacob William Rees-Mogg (born 24 May 1969) is a British Conservative Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Somerset since the 2010 general election.
Rees-Mogg is the son of William Rees-Mogg, a former editor of The Times. He is married to the heiress Helena de Chair, with whom he has three children,[1] two boys and one girl.
Contents |
[edit] Early life
He grew up in Somerset, before being educated at Eton and subsequently read history at Trinity College, Oxford, becoming president of the University Conservative Association.[2]
[edit] Career
He set up his own company, Somerset Capital Management in 2007. Previously he was in Global Emerging Markets at Lloyd George Management in London. Rees-Mogg is on the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party.[3]
[edit] Political career
Rees-Mogg has courted controversy during previous election campaigns. In 1997 he was Tory candidate for the historically Labour seat of Central Fife. He canvassed a largely working class neighbourhood in his Bentley with his nanny;[4] he lost in the 1997 election, receiving 9% of the vote.
In 1999, when it was being rumoured that his 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, 23 May 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".[5] He later told The Scotsman (October 2001), "I gradually realised that whatever I happened to be speaking about, the number of voters in my favour dropped as soon as I opened my mouth."
Rees-Mogg 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 as well as a humane issue. Between 2005 and 2008 Rees-Mogg was the elected Chairman of the Cities of London and Westminster Conservative Association.
He was one of the directors of the Roman Catholic Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth in London who were ordered to resign by Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor in February 2008 after protracted arguments over the adoption of a tighter ethical code banning non-Catholic practices such as abortions and sex-change operations.[6]
In March 2009, Rees-Mogg was forced to apologise to Trevor Kavanagh, former political editor of The Sun, after it was shown that a newsletter signed by Rees-Mogg had plagiarised sections of a Kavanagh article that had appeared in the newspaper over a month earlier.[7]
He was, being the caricature of a "detached" and "other-wordly" Tory, described as Conservative leader "David Cameron’s worst nightmare" by The Times[1] during the 2010 general election campaign. Rees-Mogg took North East Somerset with a majority of 4,914.[8]
Rees-Mogg is rated as one of the Conservatives' most rebellious MPs.[9] He has even worded his opinion that Somerset deserves to be of a different timezone than the rest of the UK.
[edit] Family
In January 2007 Rees-Mogg married Helena de Chair, an heiress and writer on a trade magazine for the oil industry. She is the daughter of Somerset de Chair (d.1995) and Lady Juliet Tadgell (previously married to Victor Hervey, 6th Marquess of Bristol and jointly heir with the late Hon. Elizabeth-Anne Hastings to the Wentworth-Fitzwilliam Wentworth Woodhouse, Malton, and Coolattin estates). She was half-sister of Lord Nicholas Hervey, who committed suicide in 1998. She has five remaining half-siblings from de Chair's prior marriages.
Part of the ecumenical marriage service in Canterbury Cathedral included a Roman Catholic Tridentine Mass conducted in Latin by Dom Aidan Bellenger, the Abbot of Downside Abbey.[10] The couple has since had a son, named Peter Theodore Alphege. "The first name is after Helena's grandfather and the last name is that of a saint[11] born in my constituency. Alphege was executed for not giving the Vikings enough Danegeld, so he was the first anti-taxation martyr", he told Daily Mail reporter Richard Kay.[10] Alphege was born in the village of Weston on the outskirts of Bath.[12][13]
Rees-Mogg's youngest sister, the journalist Annunziata Rees-Mogg, was also a Conservative parliamentary candidate in Somerset but failed to win her seat.[2]
[edit] References
- ^ a b Camilla Long "Jacob Rees-Mogg: Maybe he’s canvassing in the King of Spain’s private loo", The Sunday Times, 11 April 2010
- ^ a b Guy Adams, Rees-Mogg: First family of fogeys in The Independent, 19 October 2006
- ^ Marianne MacDonald "The truth about nanny", Mail on Sunday, 26 March 2000 [as on the Find Articles website, page 1]
- ^ Long, Camilla. "Jacob Rees-Mogg: Maybe he’s canvassing in the King of Spain’s private loo". The Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article7094258.ece. Retrieved 12 February 2011.
- ^ Mullen, John (18 June 1999), "Lost voices", The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,,291790,00.html
- ^ Butt, Riazat (22 February 2008). "Archbishop orders Catholic hospital board to resign in ethics dispute". The Guardian. http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/22/catholicism.health. Retrieved 23 February 2008.
- ^ Savill, Richard (5 March 2009). "Tory candidate apologises over Sun plagiarism row". The Daily Telegraph. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/4943713/Tory-candidate-apologises-over-Sun-plagiarism-row.html. Retrieved 5 March 2009.
- ^ Somerset North East, BBC News — Election 2010
- ^ http://conservativehome.blogs.com/parliament/2010/12/the-latest-league-table-of-tory-backbench-rebellion.html
- ^ a b Kay, Richard (14 January 2007), "Jacob gets hitched, old-Tory style", Daily Mail, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/columnists/columnists.html?in_article_id=428788&in_page_id=1772&in_author_id=230
- ^ A Universal Biography, Vol I, p. 139, William à Beckett, 1834, accessed 29 December 2008
- ^ Knowles, David; London, Vera C. M.; Brooke, Christopher (2001). The Heads of Religious Houses, England and Wales, 940-1216 (Second Edition ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 28, 241. ISBN 0-521-80452-3.
- ^ Somerset Legends, p. 46, Berta Lawrence, 1973, accessed 16 January 2009
[edit] External links
- Jacob Rees-Mogg MP Official website
- Jacob Rees Mogg MP Conservative Party profile
- North East Somerset Conservatives
- Profile at Parliament of the United Kingdom
- Contributions in Parliament at Hansard 1803–2005
- Current session contributions in Parliament at Hansard
- Electoral history and profile at The Guardian
- Voting record at PublicWhip.org
- Record in Parliament at TheyWorkForYou.com
- Profile at Westminster Parliamentary Record
- Profile at BBC News Democracy Live
- Paul Brason, Portrait Artist Jacob Rees-Mogg portrait in the collection of Eton College
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by New constituency |
Member of Parliament for North East Somerset 2010-present |
Succeeded by Incumbent |
