James Rees-Mogg is being tipped as the future prime minister
He is known in Parliament as “The Honourable Member for the early 20th century”, has gained a reputation for his traditional dress sense, cut-glass accent and insistence on the importance of good breeding.
But this aloof image is delightfully subverted by genuine charm and warmth and now Jacob Rees-Mogg, the 48-year-old MP for North East Somerset, has become the most unlikely social media star since, well, Jeremy Corbyn.
There are dozens of Facebook pages devoted to Rees-Mogg, some with tens of thousands of followers, and since joining the social media platform Instagram, the charismatic MP has built up a huge online following with his account proving even more popular than that of Prime Minister Theresa May.
There are internet groups rejoicing in names such as “The Church of Mogg”, websites selling T-shirts with his face photoshopped over an image of Godfather star Marlon Brando bearing the title “The Moggfather” and a twitter hashtag, #moggmentum, devoted to his popularity.
And far from satirising or downplaying his upper-class image, they are all celebrating it.
I am a late convert to social media and it’s turned out to be great fun
This may all come as a surprise in an age when a 68-year-old Marxist can address thousands of teenagers at Glastonbury but it would appear that the key to his popularity with the Conservative youth is his wit, charm, integrity and traditional British values.
In that sense, Rees-Mogg is the “anti-Corbyn”.
“I am a late convert to social media and it’s turned out to be great fun,” he said recently.
“We’ve put up some jolly photographs. You hear a lot about unpleasantness but it’s reassuring that there is a lighter touch.”
Among these photographs is a snap of the MP and his eldest son wearing matching suits outside a tattoo parlour with a “Vote Labour” poster in its window.
He has six children with wife Helena
Rees-Mogg captioned the photo: “We shall have to take our business elsewhere.”
Another is a spoof article from website the Daily Mash with the headline, “Jacob Rees-Mogg sent from 1923 to save Conservative Party”.
His most recent post is a photo of him cradling newborn Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher – while wearing a double-breasted suit. Sixtus is – appropriately enough – his sixth child with wife Helena, daughter of aristocrat Somerset de Chair.
His other children are called Alfred Wulfric Leyson Pius, Tom Wentworth Somerset Dunstan, Peter Theodore Alphege, Anselm Charles Fitzwilliam and Mary Anne Charlotte Emma.
If the sudden popularity of a man famed for such a traditional image seems strange, it has to be said that it is simply the latest manifestation of a public fascination with Rees-Mogg that extends back to his childhood.
Born into a wealthy family – his father William was the editor of The Times and a life peer – Jacob was educated at Eton and Oxford, and was already making headlines when barely into double figures.
Aged 10, Jacob became fascinated by the financial markets.
He had his first letter published in the Financial Times aged 12, and that same year addressed the AGM of a company he had invested in to advise them against a potential takeover.
At Eton he is said to have paid other boys to polish his shoes and, according to an article written in the Oxford student newspaper Cherwell, also employed a boy to follow him with an umbrella on cross-country runs.
That same article reveals that he had already made a million on the stock market by the time he arrived at Trinity College, Oxford, and it was at university that he not only began his political career but also became a fixture in the student newspaper gossip columns.
After running unsuccessfully for president of the Conservative Association, he was a regular speaker at the Oxford Union where he extolled the virtues of cycling around the city in morning suit and mortarboard.
Such was his lovable eccentricity that by the time he left aged 21, there was even an official university Jacob Rees-Mogg Appreciation Society.
Jacob Rees-Mogg studying the finance pages as a boy
A highly successful career in the City followed, before – once again – his political ambitions took over.
Although his first attempt to win a seat in Parliament saw him ridiculed at the time, it perhaps can now be seen as providing an example of precisely what makes him so popular today.
Contesting the Labour stronghold of Central Fife in the 1997 general election, the 28-year-old hit the campaign trail in a smart blazer and tie. He responded to false accusations that he campaigned in a Bentley with, “It was a Mercedes. A Bentley would be most unsuitable for canvassing.”
It took until 2010 for Rees-Mogg to win an election in the seat of North East Somerset, and since entering Parliament his refusal to compromise his background, beliefs or appearance has won him admiration across the political divide.
The gay SNP MP Mhairi Black even once jokingly described him as “my boyfriend”.
In an age of career politicians who are schooled in the delivery of vacuous media-trained platitudes, Rees-Mogg makes a refreshing change.
His mastery of the Commons floor has also become legendary – in one long speech designed to block the passage of the Sustainable Livestock Bill he covered the quality of Somerset eggs, the sewerage system, the Battle of Agincourt and the fictional pig the Empress of Blandings, who won silver at the Shropshire County Show three years in a row.
He has also proposed tongue-incheek motions that council officials should be made to wear bowler hats and that the Daylight Saving Bill should be amended to give Somerset its own time zone, 15 minutes behind London.
In 2012 he entered the record books for the longest word ever spoken in Parliament: floccinaucinihilipilification – meaning “the habit of considering as worthless”, which he used in a debate on Europe.
The EU is a topic on which he is passionately engaged.
He has described the victory for the Leave campaign as “a wonderful liberation for the country”, adding “no political event in my lifetime has been better or more exciting for the nation”.
He is passionately engaged about the EU
Following a particularly impassioned speech in the Commons earlier this year, Brexit secretary David Davis declared: “As ever, my right honourable friend speaks for England.”
As a committed Catholic, Rees-Mogg opposes same-sex marriage.
He has also said that he would “almost certainly vote for Donald Trump if I were American”.
It is this sort of integrity that is fuelling Moggmania.
According to a former colleague: “You don’t get into Trinity College, Oxford, or go anywhere in the City by being stupid.”
The question is: does The Moggfather have what it takes to make it to Number 10?
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