The Guardian - 07.09.2019

Section:GDN 1N PaGe:9 Edition Date:190907 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 6/9/2019 17:51 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

Saturday 7 September 2019 The Guardian •

9

 William

Rees-Mogg ’s

slouch inspired

a host of memes,

seeing him

crowd-surfi ng

at a festival, as

Millais’ Ophelia,

illustrating

Tory numbers,

joining The

Simpsons, and as

Manet’s Olympia

His posture was used to trace the

decline of the government’s majority

from 17 to minus 43 and the rapid

fall in the value of the pound against

the euro since 2016. The reclining

Rees-Mogg was superimposed

dancing with the ska band Madness,

high-jumping the Fosbury fl op

and dropped on to the sofas of The

Simpsons and Friends (renamed No

Friends).

Those of an artistic bent

compared his pose to Jacques-Louis

David’s the Death of Marat, Sir

John Everett Millais’ Ophelia and a

sprawling upper-class gentleman

in Thomas Dugdale’s Arrival of the

Jarrow Marchers in London.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party

MP , said the public response to his

unusual parliamentary pose had

been magnifi ed by the importance of

the debate.

“It does demonstrate an

extraordinary confi dence and a

sense of entitlement if you literally

take up far more social space than

anyone else and that manifested

itself in looking so contemptuous of

everyone else,” she said.

“I think he has suddenly learnt

that what you can get away with on

the backbench you cannot do on the

frontbench. This is an image that is

going to follow him for many years

to come.”

His performances at the despatch

box – he was accused of being

dismissive of questions posed by

remain-supporting colleagues – also

enraged some of the 21 Tory MPs

who voted against the government

that night.

Soames said: “Jacob Rees-Mogg’s

performance , his rudeness and

casualness to colleagues, shows he

just doesn’t understand the way

it works ... it was just bloody bad

behaviour. You wouldn’t see Andrea

Leadsom lying about.”

The Labour MP Chris Bryant, a

former shadow leader of the house,

said Rees-Mogg’s performance had

failed to take into consideration the

government’s weak position. “The

thing about the leader of the house

job is you have to do it with a great

deal of grace, especially when it’s

a minority government. Leaders

with pointy elbows don’t tend to get

much done,” he said.

Rees-Mogg’s week went from

bad to worse on Thursday when

he compared a consultant who

helped draw up no-deal medical

plans to the disgraced anti-vaxxer

Andrew Wakefi eld. He eventually

apologised following pressure from

Westminster colleagues and the

chief medical offi cer of England,

who said the comments about the

respected neurologist David Nicholl

were disrespectful.

Rees-Mogg was elected to the

Commons in 2010, but his profi le

rose considerably in the wake of

the 2016 Brexit referendum when

his calm performances in front

of television cameras led him to

being seen as a possible future

prime minister. The Catholic son

of the former Times editor William

Rees-Mogg has refused to bow to

mainstream views on abortion,

which he opposes even in cases

of rape. And he has dismissed

questions about investment funds

established in Ireland by Somerset

Capital Management, the fi rm

he co-founded. SCM had warned

investors about the dangers of a

hard Brexit, while Rees-Mogg was

speaking out about “scare stories

from Project Fear”.

But a close colleague, Andrew

Bridgen, the Eurosceptic MP , said

his diffi cult week should not detract

from his talents. “ The opposition

clearly want to get some hits on him

because they see him as a threat in

what has been a very bad week for

the party,” he said.

“Jacob was the darling of the

Labour party when he was attacking

May or Cameron. Now that

Euroscepticism is mainstream, he

is the enemy. There is no politician I

have met who is consistently more

polite than Jacob.”

Meme heaven

‘It will follow him

for years’: how

Jacob Rees-Mogg’s

lounging backfi red

Rajeev Syal

I

n a week fi lled with

memorable political images

• Boris Johnson’s sideways
  glance at a fainting police
  offi cer, Sir Nicholas Soames
  blinking back tears after he
  was expelled from the Conservative
  party and the former minister Dr
  Phillip Lee unexpectedly crossing
  the fl oor of the House of Commons
  to join the Liberal Democrats – it was
  the image of a near-horizontal Jacob
  Rees-Mogg lounging across the front
  bench that lit up the internet.
  As a tense emergency debate
  aff ecting the livelihoods of millions
  of people continued around him, the
  leader of the house leant back and
  stretched his long legs across several
  seats , his left hand lolled across a
  besuited midriff.
  With MPs agonis ing over the
  gravity of the political crisis , the
  member for Somerset North East
  nonchalantly closed his eyes and
  rested.
  For some MPs in the chamber on
  Tuesday night, it was the moment
  the man nicknamed “the honourable
  member for the 18th^ century” lost
  any remaining anachronistic charm.
  Rees-Mogg has had a reputation
  among some parliamentarians
  and the public as a curiosity. His
  politeness, deft use of parliamentary
  procedure, precise pronunciation
  of 29-letter words such as
  fl occinaucinihilipilifi cation and
  even his decision to name his sixth
  child Sixtus won over many of those
  who disliked his populist politics.
  But his nonchalant posture this
  week enraged MPs and sent social
  media users into overdrive.

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