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.
he spits gold bars https://t.co/9jqvzbTmio— Hugo Gye (@Hugo Gye) 1553697988
Many said Rees-Mogg needs to 'grow up'.
Fucking hell - imagine wanting to be Prime Minister, but also thinking it was a hard burn to slag off someone for g… https://t.co/UCIZ5V49gX— Caitlin Moran (@Caitlin Moran) 1553699480
Others highlighted how pervasive this way of seeing the world is in British culture.
This is the full Tory id on display. There's a tiresome rivalry between Eton (Rees-Mogg's old school) and Wincheste… https://t.co/FT198ukttC— Ed Howker (@Ed Howker) 1553700494
Another helpfully translated the dig.
For the non-native Latin speakers among us, he is jovially ribbing his fellow MP for attending Winchester College a… https://t.co/49d2yQyzck— Ellen Barry (@Ellen Barry) 1553698902
Others thought the whole thing was pretty predictable.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is now officially boring. As is Oliver Letwin. https://t.co/NTMuRQwajo— Josh Barrie (@Josh Barrie) 1553699449
And others said it was abysmal.
Abysmal https://t.co/U0NlIHUFxi— Tom Peck (@Tom Peck) 1553698330