Free speech advocate Jacob Rees-Mogg is literally banning his staff using certain words


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As Jacob Rees-Mogg takes his place in Boris Johnson’s new cabinet, it’s been revealed that he has a style guide and a list of banned words. They’re as backwards and weird as you’d expect. People had fun with it, but some of Rees-Mogg’s writerly demands are troubling.

It turns out the free speech advocate isn’t above banning words.

Jacob Rees-Mogg, Esq., M.P.

ITV News revealed the list of style guidelines and a list of prohibited words. The Rees-Mogg house style mandates the following:

The guide starts off strong (The Canary also treats organisations as SINGULAR), but rapidly goes downhill. The thought of calling “all non-titled males” esquire has led to a lot of ridicule for the honourable fop:

Although many Britons use imperial measurements for some things and metric for others, few people under retirement age are calling for the complete return of imperial:

Britain adopted the metric system in 1965. Rees-Mogg – despite acting like a Victorian – was born in 1969. By the time he entered the school system, nearly a decade had passed since we began using metric measurements. As such, it’s no wonder people are accusing Rees-Mogg of being a massive try-hard:

Others pointed out that his stance is an odd one from a man who once said, “I just believe government money should be spent well”:

Very disappointment

Perhaps more troubling are the words that the alleged free speech advocate has banned:

Is Rees-Mogg hearing phrases like ‘disappointment’, ‘unacceptable’, and ‘no longer fit for purpose’ so often that he never wants to hear them again?

People had some things to say:

Conserving the past

Not everyone is critical, however. Twitter user Lee Morgan suggested that it’s our “lack of standards” which led us to where we are today:

It’s not clear how the double space will solve climate change, reverse austerity, or end inequality. But, then again, it isn’t for us common folk to understand the thinking of our ‘very’ honourable esquires like Rees-Mogg. They make the weird rules; we just follow them.

Welcome to Boris Johnson’s 21st-century cabinet.

A cabinet in which some words aren’t free, and others might cost you a shilling in the ‘disappointment’ jar.

Featured image via LadyGeekTV – Wikimedia 

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  • Show Comments

    1. If Mogg were not in the neo-liberal camp, differences between us would be trivial. As matters stand I don’t like the company he keeps; he shows lack of discrimination and taste by consorting with such as Johnson, a man intellectually and morally grossly inferior.

      Setting that aside, some of his ideas appeal. Although the Moggs are not deeply rooted in recorded English history, I believe they did come to grasp ‘noblesse oblige’ once their fortunes changed. Mogg in many ways represents what the Conservative Party once stood for; exacting standards, self-discipline, reasonable tolerance of the crass culture of intellectual/educational inferiors, probity, and decency. Perhaps in these times of stress he is aided by having Roman Catholic rather than insipid Anglican heritage. Yet, through being gulled by unsavoury acquaintances into an outlook befitting the late, and unlamented, Ayn Rand, he has placed his earthly reputation and soul in peril.

      Mogg jokingly is referred to as Minister for the Nineteenth Century. That overlooks many virtues associated with that very exciting period of British history. It was time of intellectual and technological ferment. It was when gentlemen were, in large measure, broadly educated and polymaths could exist. It was a period in which hypocrisy and immorality thrived but that no more than nowadays.

      We live in a time when Jack is encouraged to believe he is as good as his master: patent nonsense. Mogg and I know better.

      Jack cannot aspire to anything more than empty existence floating on a sea of carefully manipulated popular culture and ‘consumer’ expectations. Jack’s only means of rising is by cultivating clarity of thought and its mode of expression. The current state educational system stultifies rather than encouraging these attributes. It looks askance when Jack seeks to rise above his peers. However, the private education system achieves little better when confronted by the likes of Johnson; it merely prepares them for the Oxford finishing school where social graces are instilled via clubs such as the Bullingdon.

      In this light, anyone encouraging subordinates to deploy sound grammar, to eschew hackneyed words and phrases, and to cultivate manners, is indeed putting ‘noblesse oblige’ into practice and merits praise from other cultivated people.

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