“It was a PR stunt, pure and simple, and that’s Jacob,” says a Whitehall source with knowledge of the episode. The Cabinet Office minister’s move did what it was designed to do: it sent a message that Rees-Mogg – and by extension Boris Johnson – was on the anti-awakening side of the culture war. He played the role of Johnson’s right-wing extremist for three years, saying the things the prime minister couldn’t get away with, such as dismissing Partygate as “fluff”. And now he is poised to take on the same role for Liz Truss, for whom he hit out at the media during her campaign by describing her comments suggesting British workers needed more of a graft as “sensible”. For his dedication, he has been rewarded with a desk job as business secretary and Rees-Mogg once again appears to have picked a winner during a Tory leadership campaign. But for Truss, keeping Rees-Mogg around is a gamble, given his polarizing views and penchant for blunders. He is unashamedly pro-fracking, he is in favor of extracting every last drop of oil from the North Sea and he has decried ‘climate alarmism’. Already, he has had to appoint another minister to sit in the cabinet and look after the climate after an outcry from the pro-Green Tories. The new business secretary, who is strongly pro-deregulation, may also face questions about his continued financial interests: he retained a significant stake in the hedge fund he co-founded, Somerset Capital Management, while in Johnson’s cabinet. The new prime minister has shown her faith in Rees-Mogg by promoting him, but political sources say Johnson came close to sacking his ally on more than one occasion, most seriously when he suggested the victims of the Grenfell fires should have the “common logic” to escape. Rees-Mogg, who had hosted campaign dinners for Johnson at his £5m mansion in Westminster, always found favor with him. “We all thought Jacob was a crook and none of us thought he was a good representative of the government at the time,” says a former Downing Street aide, recalling midway through the 2019 election campaign. “He always managed to say something with a bone. He was told by No 10 to apologize or face the sack. And Boris put him in the freezer for who knows how long. But somehow it came back.” His ability to deflect criticism combined with his lifelong hunger for the limelight is, they say, Johnson-like. “Even more than Boris, he was always a first-time celebrity,” says another person who has worked closely with him, pointing to his history of TV appearances as a “young fogy” on Have I Got News for You and a meeting with Ali . G. “It’s tart. He is always everywhere, he does everything to be noticed.” A regular figure in the diary columns before entering political life, Rees-Mogg even appeared in a Daily Mail article in 2007 talking about how his first child was conceived on the fifth day of his honeymoon in the Seychelles and had to be honored with his heroine. Lady Thatcher’s birthday. But Rees-Mogg always saw himself as much more than a caricature. He doesn’t lack confidence – or ambition. The scope of his ambitions was shown in an interview he gave to French television as a 12-year-old with a lawsuit. Traveling in the back of a Rolls-Royce, Rees-Mogg declared that he “loved money” and wanted to be a corporate executive in his 30s. And at 70? “I would love to be prime minister,” he said.

“We don’t know where it came from”

Born Jacob William Rees-Mogg in Hammersmith, London in 1969, he is one of the wealthiest cabinet ministers, with Spear’s Wealth Management estimating in 2019 that his net worth is “well in excess of £100 million”, including the expected his heritage. wife, Lady Helena de Chair; His ancestry was rich but not blue-blooded, although his father, William Rees-Mogg, moved in privileged circles through his work as editor of The Times. His mother, born Gillian Morris, was his father’s secretary and now lives near Gournay Court, a Grade II* listed Somerset mansion owned by the Rees-Moggs and their six children. Rees-Mogg claims he does not change nappies but relies on the services of his own former nanny, Veronica Crook, who looked after his children and has worked for the family for more than five decades. A contemporary at Westminster Under School, Julien Garran, said the signs of ambition were always there. “He was quite pushy even then. I think they had given him some shares and I remember once an article was written about him that he had harassed the CEO for not doing his job properly. At this point he was 11 years old,” he said. Describing him as “unusual”, Garran said: “That was perhaps the clearest example of his kind of character and the fact that he was an unusually and surprisingly fast bowler. We were just kids, but I think that part of his character probably came out at that point.” None of his siblings appeared to show a similar love of Victorian traditionalism, although his sister, Annunziata Rees-Mogg, was also politically inclined, unsuccessfully running for the Tories and later becoming a Brexit Party MEP. According to Rees-Mogg’s biography by the Conservative peer Lord Ashcroft, his father once remarked to his schoolmaster: “We don’t know where he has come from.” After prep school, Rees-Mogg went to Eton, five school years under Boris Johnson and two under David Cameron. From there he went to Trinity College, Oxford, where one of his best friends was former Tory MP Louise Mensch, with whom he remains in touch. Those who knew him from that time remember a rambunctious but self-promoting young man who was addicted to Cadbury’s Creme Eggs and Eurosceptic student politics. Rees-Mogg did not propose to her, Mensch says, and their relationship was always platonic, contrary to earlier rumours, but she based the “alt-romantic hero” on him in her novel Venus Envy. “It’s kind of almost a romance for our heroine, and then she basically falls in love with someone else, and so does he,” she says, adding, “We were just very, very, very close.” Mensch says that one of Rees-Mogg’s best qualities was that he “simply didn’t care at all about what anyone else thought” and that his love of tradition and the establishment was far from practical. “The anecdotes that come out about Jacob, that he likes to listen to the shipping forecast and such, that he would stand whenever someone played God Save the Queen, people think that these things are influenced or done for publicity in politics. I can assure your readers that it is not. He’s been doing this his whole life, literally forever,” he says. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. It was at Oxford that Rees-Mogg’s Eurosceptic views were developed, along with Daniel Hannan, who would become a Tory MEP. “It was like three little Thatcherites hanging out together and just having a great time,” says Mensch. Andrew Bridgen, a Conservative MP who joined the same 2010 motion as Rees-Mogg and Mance, was on the same side as Rees-Mogg during the Eurosceptic battles over a hard Brexit seen under Theresa May. He echoes Mensch’s view that Rees-Mogg doesn’t play a role. “It’s the real deal. What you see is what you get,” he says. “He has no private and public personality.” Others who have worked with him aren’t so sure. “Is this a job he has put in or has the mask eaten on his face? It’s not clear,” says the person who worked closely with him for years in politics.

Properties, plagiarism… and potted plants

During his entrepreneurial career, Rees-Mogg worked in Hong Kong and Mayfair for hedge funds before setting out on his own. His ventures have been successful, including Somerset Capital Management, which he founded with financier Dominic Johnson and is still interested in, receiving dividends. His property portfolio now ranges from Gournay Court to his Westminster mansion and his register of interests includes two flats in Pall Mall owned by his company, Saliston. His company also owns two other properties, a former school near Gournay Court and a bungalow in Midsomer Norton. It does, however, state a farmhouse in Somerset from which rent is collected. Neighbors of a farmhouse and surrounding fields in Midsomer Norton, in his constituency, believe Rees-Mogg is the beneficiary of a trust that owns the land, although he has refused to answer questions about his ownership. With such a large fortune, Rees-Mogg has clearly made his own money but has always wanted to enter politics, unsuccessfully trying for Central Fife in 1997 and The Wrekin in 2001. When he first came to parliament in 2010, Rees-Mogg was seen as a bit of a joke, known for his previous campaign as a 27-year-old hedge fund manager in Scotland with the help of his family’s nanny and his father’s Mercedes. . The rival Labor candidate, former Scottish First Minister Henry McLeish, says he had to step in to prevent the Young Tories from being beaten during their first foray into politics in 1997. “I kind of patronized him in a way because he was completely out of line and I guess class, because I’m sure he’d never met people like my supporters in his life,” says McLeish. “I have no idea how such a man could have attained the stature he has from the point of view of a . . .