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Politics
Kate Plummer
Mar 18, 2022
Jacob Rees-Mogg says Partygate is 'disproportionate fluff'
Independent
Jacob Rees-Mogg has annoyed people once again by repeating his assertion that Partygate isn't all that serious.
In a live recording of Conservative Home's podcast the Moggcast (hah!) at the Conservative Spring conference today, the minister for Brexit opportunities reportedly said the war in Ukraine and the cost of living crisis had made politics more "serious" and made people get away from "wokery" and Partygate, which he dismissed as "fluff".
In the aftermath of Putin’s invasion, “nobody cares” about rows over words which may offend people, Rees-Mogg said.
“All that nonsense is shown up for the trivial nature of it, and that we are now looking at serious difficult decisions that have to be made,” he said.
"I'd say the same of Partygate that all that is shown up for the disproportionate fluff of politics that it was, rather than something of fundamental serious about the safety of the world and about the established global order."
"When we look back in 36 years at Partygate, people will think `What were they on about? They were moving from Covid to Russia and Ukraine, yet they were distracted by whether or not the PM spent five minutes in his own garden. It’s fundamentally trivial.”
The last time he dismissed Partygate - in which government staffers have been accused of multiple lockdown breaches, if you have forgotten - was on Chopper's Politics podcast last week. Host Christopher Hope asked the minister: “If [Boris Johnson] gets a fixed penalty notice for partying during lockdown, should he resign?”
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After seemingly disingenuously asking what Partygate was, he replied: “We’ve got to be serious. We’ve got to think about a global crisis. We have got to be thinking about a cost of living crisis.
“We’ve got to think about what is happening both in this country and across the world. We cannot be distracted by things that may or may not have happened a couple of years ago for a few minutes.”
He added: “This is not serious politics. It never was. It was always disproportionate.”
It seems that in a week he hasn't changed his mind. Have a listen to his comments here:
What a patronising dollop of custard.https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1504777291615854595\u00a0\u2026— Peat Cutter (@Peat Cutter) 1647606312
Reacting to his latest spiel, people were not happy:
Usual nonsense from Rees-Mogg, integrity is at the heart of politics whatever the issue, the bigger the issue the more important it is that we have integrity in our government— Andrew Hooper (@Andrew Hooper) 1647597137
\u201cPartygate\u201d was never about whether the PM was \u201cambushed by a cake\u201d. It\u2019s about whether we have a serious PM who tells the truth and who follows the same rules that he expects the rest of us to follow. In difficult times it\u2019s even more important we have a PM with these qualities— Richard Simon (@Richard Simon) 1647597234
why were ordinary citizens fined up to \u00a310000 for fluff— Ian Politics \u25cf (@Ian Politics \u25cf) 1647597189
Breaking the law is now "fluff"? \n\nCool, not sure how that is going look on the Conservative manifesto like but its like JRM worries about stuff like that is it?— Rich (@Rich) 1647597127
Rees Mogg's occasional meandering reflections on the great social & economic issues of the day are a classical example of political fluff.https://twitter.com/SamCoatesSky/status/1504756031112597534\u00a0\u2026— Clare Hepworth OBE (@Clare Hepworth OBE) 1647601543
It wasn\u2019t fluff. Our PM stands accused of breaking the law. Laws other people followed and missed out on huge events in their lives. Two bad things can be happening at the same time.— Baroness Rachel of Belmont (@Baroness Rachel of Belmont) 1647597564
Rees-Mogg is best left chatting about his odd wardrobe.
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