Who is Jacob Rees-Mogg?

Jacob Rees-Mogg lives a life of luxury as the rest of the country grapples with the cost of living crisis. So what makes the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency tick? Learn more in the latest in our ‘Meet the Tories‘ series.

Video transcript

Jacob Rees-Mogg is known for being a walking Victorian meme.

From his views on abortion…

I’m completely opposed to abortion

To his thoughts on mental health and showing emotions…

I’m not a fan of this new age drippiness

Jacob Rees-Mogg has made a name for himself by rejecting modern liberal social views. He attributed the Grenfell disaster to a lack of ‘common sense’ on the part of the victimsAnd has positioned himself as a proud ultra-conservative Christian. Despite the media fan-fare over his unconventional wardrobe and views, he inflicts real-world harm through his parliamentary votes against the poor and disabled.

Let’s go back to the beginning…

Jacob Rees-Mogg was born on 24 May 1969 to a wealthy family – his father was the former editor of The Times newspaper, and later the owner of a wealthy financial investmentment company, which a young Jacob Rees Mogg was made a shareholder of when he was a teenager. He grew up in a palatial country mansion, with the same nanny his family still uses today. It was from his dad, a right wing propagandist, that Rees-Mogg learned to love and desire one thing more than anything else – profit. 

Read on...

Walking in his father’s footsteps, Jacob Rees-Mogg would go on to subscribe to a worldview known as ‘disaster capitalism’. This right-wing philosophy contends that new technologies will inevitably make societies more unequal, and therefore more chaotic… but here’s the catch! Rather than offering traditional conservative “solutions” to these problems, figures like Rees-Mogg and his father believe in exploiting chaotic situations to grow their own personal wealth.

Remember Brexit? Rees-Mogg was among a small elite of hedge fund firms that campaigned for the UK to leave the EU. Observers have noted his firm, Somerset Capital Management – which is heavily invested in emerging markets like China and Russia – doubled its profits in the two years after the vote.  This came as a result of the fall in the value of the pound, and significantly helped Rees-Mogg’s company profits.

Apart from making money in shady ways, Rees-Mogg has inflicted misery on millions of working families, particularly those with disabilities and those claiming social welfare. He’s voted on 12 separate occasions to lower housing benefits… He’s voted 15 different times against longer and more favourable benefits for those unable to work due to disabilities.

These policies have led to real-world consequences. People have lost their lives to the Tories cruel campaign of targeting the most vulnerable to make the rich even richer. 

So the next time you see Rees-Mogg acting like a Victorian caricature, remember this: he’s a real life villain using very modern tools to exploit the poor and working class in order to enrich himself and his family.