Jacob Rees-Mogg

Sir Jacob William Rees-Mogg (/riːs mɒɡ/ ^ⓘ REESS MOG; born 24 May 1969) is a British politician, businessman and broadcaster who served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for North East Somerset from 2010 to 2024. A member of the Conservative Party, he served as Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council from 2019 to 2022, Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency from February to September 2022 and Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy from September to October 2022. Rees-Mogg previously chaired the eurosceptic European Research Group (ERG) from 2018 to 2019 and has been associated with socially conservative views.

Rees-Mogg was born in Hammersmith, London. He was educated at Westminster Under School, Eton College and the University of Oxford where he studied history as an undergraduate student of Trinity College, Oxford, and served as president of Oxford University Conservative Association. He went on to work in the City of London and in Hong Kong for Lloyd George Management until 2007, when he co-founded the hedge fund management business Somerset Capital Management LLP. He amassed a significant fortune, estimated in 2016 at between £55 million and £150 million, including his wife's expected inheritance. Rees-Mogg unsuccessfully contested the 1997 and 2001 general elections before being elected as the MP for North East Somerset in 2010. He was reelected in 2015 and 2017, with an increased share of the vote each time, as well as in 2019, with a smaller share of the vote. Within the Conservative Party, he has joined the traditionalist and socially conservative Cornerstone Group.

During the premiership of David Cameron, Rees-Mogg was one of the Conservative Party's most rebellious MPs, opposing the whips on a number of issues. He became known for filibustering. A Eurosceptic, he proposed an electoral pact between the Conservatives and the UK Independence Party (UKIP) and campaigned for the UK to leave the European Union in the 2016 referendum. A member of the European Research Group (ERG), Rees-Mogg was elected its chairman in 2018. He attracted support for his opposition to the Chequers Agreement and Prime Minister Theresa May's proposed Brexit withdrawal agreement. He was promoted as a potential successor to May as Leader of the Conservative Party; he instead endorsed Boris Johnson in the 2019 leadership contest. Following Johnson's election as Conservative Leader and appointment as Prime Minister he appointed Rees-Mogg Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council. In February 2022, Rees-Mogg was moved by Johnson to the role of Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency. After Johnson resigned in July 2022, Rees-Mogg supported Liz Truss's bid to become Conservative leader. Following Truss's appointment as prime minister, she appointed Rees-Mogg as Business Secretary. He resigned as Business Secretary shortly after Truss left office on 25 October 2022. He was defeated at the 2024 general election, losing to the Labour Party's candidate, Dan Norris.

Rees-Mogg has been described as a conviction politician with anachronistic attitudes. Critics view him as a reactionary figure; his traditionalist attitudes have been characterised as obscuring controversial political views, some of which have made him the target of organised protests. His anachronistic style led to Rees-Mogg being dubbed the "Honourable Member for the 18th century". Since early 2023, Rees-Mogg has been a host and presenter for GB News.

Rees-Mogg was born in Hammersmith, London, on 24 May 1969, the younger son of William Rees-Mogg (1928–2012), who was editor of The Times newspaper and was made a life peer in 1988, and his wife Gillian Shakespeare Morris, formerly his secretary, daughter of Thomas Richard Morris, a lorry driver, car salesman, local government politician, and Conservative mayor of St Pancras in London. He is a descendant of the Rees-Mogg family of Cholwell, Cameley. He is one of five children, having three elder siblings, Emma Beatrice Rees-Mogg (born 1962), Charlotte Louise Rees-Mogg (born 1964) and Thomas Fletcher Rees-Mogg (born 1966), and one younger sister, Annunziata Mary Rees-Mogg (born 1979).

In 1964 the family purchased Ston Easton Park, a country house near the village of Ston Easton in Somerset, where Rees-Mogg grew up attending weekly mass and Sunday school at the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Ghost, Midsomer Norton. He started catechism in 1975 here under his governess and attended ordinary form mass. A few years later, in 1978, the family moved to the nearby village of Hinton Blewett where they purchased The Old Rectory, a Grade II listed former rectory. Living in Somerset, he regularly travelled to his family's second home in Smith Square, London, where he attended prep school at the private Westminster Under School.

Growing up, Rees-Mogg was primarily raised by the family's nanny Veronica Crook, whom he describes as a formative figure. Crook came to work for the family in 1965 to look after Rees-Mogg's older siblings, and later looked after Rees-Mogg's own children; in 2021 she had worked for the family for 56 years.

At age nine he made his first will and testament, and at thirteen he opened a Coutts bank account. When Rees-Mogg was ten, he was left £50 by a distant cousin, and his father, on his behalf, invested in shares in the now-defunct General Electric Company (GEC). Rees-Mogg said this event was the beginning of his interest in stock markets. Having learned how to read company reports and balance sheets, he later attended a shareholders' meeting at GEC, where he voted against a motion because dividends were too low. He subsequently invested in London-based conglomerate Lonrho, eventually owning 340 shares, and reportedly caused the company's chairman Lord Duncan-Sandys "discomfort" by quizzing him at an annual general meeting on the low dividends offered to shareholders. In 1981, at a shareholders' meeting of GEC, in which he owned 175 shares at the time, he told the chairman Lord Nelson that the dividend on offer was "pathetic", sparking amusement among board members and the media.