I have been mildly castigated for being rude about Owen Paterson, who suffered the suicide of his wife. But at the moment, it seems that everywhere one looks the government is tearing up the rule book. I’m afraid that I find one of the more repugnant is Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Leader of the House, taking loans from his own company – a mere £6 million – without bothering to declare them. I find this particularly offensive because a) he is the Leader of the House. If anyone should be setting standards, he surely should. He is not some backbench rascal, trying to top up his income. b) he presents himself as a parody of Victorian probity and this is now revealed to be a total sham. He’s a crook, dressed up to look like a gentleman.
| Charles | Saumarez | Smith | 
You are correct: He is not a back-bench rascal; He is a front bench rascal.
Hear, hear!! He represents the species of Victorian, so called probity, who would have run a workhouse.
Words fail me with this creature, so a while go I found myself channeling Gibbon: “Though his father was but the editor of a Broadsheet and schooled respectably enough at The Charterhouse, Mr Rees-Mogg was sent to Eton College, where he cultivated such a lofty and disdainful manner of diction and discourse, that soon not even the most languid and elaborately-escutcheon’d Duke might touch him for Flippancy and Insolence. When he pitched himself against the flower of Albion’s Aristocracy, even Norfolk and Spencer seem’d but Ploughboys to this polished Paragon. As he sauntered toward his Faction’s yearly gathering in Manchester, with leisurely gait and supercilious mien, he was surprised there by a Mr Hutchins, that daily fought hard for the benefit of Poor men stricken with the Palsy, though he himself laboured beneath the ravages of that cruel Distemper. This enrag’d Invalid, in a most Terrifick and guttural diatribe, berated the Elegant Parliamentarian for the contempt he had oft express’t for the Poor and Diseas’d (a failing many had noted was audibly discordant with the strains of Catholic Piety that daily emanated from Mr Rees-Mogg’s luxurious household). Though Mr Rees-Mogg immediately stammered out a rosary of Mellifluous Platitudes and Patrician Assurances, they served merely to darken and deepen the profound Gulf that prevails twixt Dives and Lazarus both in Albion and the Hereafter, that seem’d vividly delineated for onlookers by the dramatick appearance of Mr Hutchins.
Reblogged this on Robin Saikia and commented:
Perfectly put…