News

Jacob Rees-Mogg referenced public school rivalry in the House of Commons, and he's getting roasted

Jacob Rees-Mogg referenced public school rivalry in the House of Commons, and he's getting roasted

No one is under any illusion that Britain is largely, and always has been, run by a small upper-middle class network of public school boys. Great!

Therefore, it was unsurprising when Jacob Rees-Mogg hammered this home again today while talking in the commons. It comes on a historic day, which has seen MPs seize control of the parliamentary timetable for the first time in living memory, in order to hold a series of indicative votes to work out parliament's preferred Brexit outcome.

When criticising one of his opponents Nick Boles in the Chamber, Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg reverted to public school in-fighting,

Boles stood up to argue that he could be in support of the PM, without endorsing her Brexit strategy, and the Old Etonian decided to bring up that Boles' education at Winchester College could be the problem with his argument.

In an antiquated speech, he said:

My honourable friend makes a characteristically Wykehamist point - highly intelligent, but fundamentally wrong.

He then added:

And I must confess I’ve sometimes thought my right honourable friend for West Dorset [Oliver Letwin] was more a Wykehamist than of my own school.

Needless to say, people on Twitter were less than impressed with the criticisms.

Many said Rees-Mogg needs to 'grow up'.

Others highlighted how pervasive this way of seeing the world is in British culture.

Another helpfully translated the dig.

Others thought the whole thing was pretty predictable.

And others said it was abysmal.

One summed the whole thing up pretty succinctly.

HT TotalPolitics.com

More: Jacob Rees-Mogg said Brexit will make the UK ‘better for investors’ and everyone made the same point

More: A group of Brexiteers reportedly calling themselves the 'Grand Wizards' have caused outrage

The Conversation (0)
x