I’d best open this likely ‘series’ with a word about the technical term ‘greedy bastards’. These comprise that subset of exceptionally wealthy accumulators of capital intent on further accumulation via donating, sponsoring, lobbying and otherwise cajoling favourable policymaking by the state’s power elite. The adjective ‘greed’ captures their all-consuming focus on personal wealth and influence through capital accumulation, and the term ‘bastards’ reflects a willingness to privilege this project over any kind of compassionate concern for others. These greedy bastards are comfortable with class-exploitation and state-oppression; they can live with the austerity-induced misery and suicides of those deemed and dismissed as lesser mortals.
Jacob Rees-Mogg was born in Hammersmith in London on 24 May 1969, the son of William Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times, and Gillian Morris, daughter of a former Conservative Mayor of St Pancreas in London. A few years before Jacob’s birth his parents bought Ston Easton Park in Somerset. In 1978 the family moved nearby to The Old Rectory in the village of Hinton Blewett (now valued at £2 million). Young Jacob regularly commuted to his family’s second home in Smith Square in London, where he attended the independent boy’s prep school Westminster Under School. The family’s nanny, Veronica Crook, was, and it seems remained, a formative influence. He displayed a precocious facility to scrutinise and trade in shares after, at the age of 10, his father invested £50 left to Jacob by a distant distant cousin; the boy was hooked.
Jacob was educated at Eton College before studying history at Trinity College, Oxford. He became President of the Oxford University Conservative Association. On graduating, he worked for the Rothschild investment bank prior to joining Lloyd George Management in Hong Kong (where is became friendly with Governor Chris Pattern). In 1996 he returned to London and was put in charge of the firm’s emerging markets funds. By 2003 he was managing a newly formed Lloyd George Emerging Markets Fund.
In 2007 Jacob co-founded Somerset Capital Management, a hedge fund management business. Never short of a bob or two, as his family background and presence at Eton testify, he went on to cement his inherited good fortune by accumulating another. In 2016 his wealth was estimated at between £50 million to £150 million (the latter figure incorporating ‘his wife’s prospects’). He stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative candidate in 1997 and 2001 before becoming MP for North East Somerset in 2010, whereupon he stood down as chief executive of Somerset Capital Management, though he continues to receive revenue as a partner. Somerset Capital Management, it is reported, is managed via subsidiaries in the tax havens of the Cayman Islands and Singapore. In 2018, the company opened an investment fund in Dublin; its prospectus cited Brexit as one of the risks, since it could lead to ‘considerable uncertainty’ (Jacob insisted that the Dublin decision was nothing to do with Brexit). Jacob has regularly defended both offshore tax havens and the extent of his wealth.
In 2014 Jacob was reported to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for contributing to debates on tobacco, mining and oil and gas without first declaring that he was a founding partner and director of Somerset Capital Management, which oversees multimillion-pound investments in those sectors. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards eventually decided that no wrongdoing had been committed, so no investigation took place.
Jacob championed Brexit before and after the referendum on 23 June 2016. His preference was and is for a ‘clean Brexit’. When Cameron resigned he endorsed Johnson, then Gove, then Leadsom in the subsequent Conservative leadership contest. In 2018 he was elected chair of the European Research Group, a Eurosceptic pressure group within the Conservative Party and has since emerged as a vociferous critic of May and a likely candidate for the Party leadership in the event of her – equally likely – demise.
It should already be clear that Jacob is not averse: (a) to accumulating capital at a rate of knots, and (b) cutting corners to do so when he can. For many this is enough to establish ‘greed’, for some enough to warrant application of the descriptor ‘bastard’. But there is more to be said.
All the material above is in the public domain. So is Jacob’s voting record in Parliament. He has routinely opposed the EU, favours turning state schools into academies, and rejects disbarring Conservative political candidates from the public schools and Oxbridge for fear of the country being run in the future by ‘potted plants’. He is against environmental protections and has argued for reducing the foreign aid budget. As a Catholic by upbringing and choice he is against abortion in any circumstances and opposes same-sex marriage.
Might he now rightfully be proclaimed a bastard? I remain hesitant, at least in light of my own definitional strictures. But there are clinching data. Consider first Jacob’s voting record on welfare and benefits. He has consistently supported the ‘bedroom tax’ (17 votes for, 0 against, 1 absence between 2012-2018). He has consistently voted against raising welfare benefits at least in line with prices (0 votes for, 5 against in 2013). He has consistently voted against paying higher benefits over longer periods for those unable to work (0 votes for, 14 votes against, 1 absence between 2011-2016). He has consistently voted for making local councils responsible for helping those in financial need afford their council tax and reducing the amount spent in such support (4 votes for, 0 against in 2012). He has consistently voted for a reduction in spending on welfare benefits (52 votes for, 0 against 2 absences between 2012-2016). And he has consistently voted against spending public money to create guaranteed jobs for young people who have spent a long time unemployed (0 votes for, 9 votes against between 2011-2014).
Nor is this all. Consider too Jacob’s voting record on taxation and employment. He consistently voted against increasing the tax rate applied to income over £150,000 (0 votes for, 11 votes against, 1 absence between 2012-2015). He almost always voted against a banker’s bonus tax (1 vote for, 16 votes against, 1 absence between 2011-2016). He consistently voted against an annual tax on the value of expensive homes, also known as a ‘mansion tax’ (0 votes for, 4 votes against in 2013). He consistently voted for more restrictive regulation of trade union activity (11 votes for, 0 against between 2010-2014). He almost always voted for reducing capital gains tax (8 votes for, 1 vote against between 2010-2016). What about issues of business and the economy? He almost always voted for reducing the rate of corporation tax (23 votes for 0 against, 3 absences between 2010-2016).
I cannot resist recording also his voting on matters of health, the context in which I developed my ‘greedy bastards hypothesis’, or GBH, which states that health inequalities are an unintended consequence of the strategic and pathogenic behaviour of members of the hard core of UK’s capitalist executive plus the state’s power elite. Jacob almost always voted against restricting the provision of services to private patients by the NHS (0 votes for, 6 against, 1 absence between 2011-2012); and almost always voted for reforming the NHS so GPs buy services on behalf of their patients (6 votes for, 0 against, 1 absence between 20111-2012). (He also consistently opposed smoking bans and allowing terminally ill people to be given assistance to end their lives.)
Setting aside Jacob’s Catholic conservatism on moral issues, for me an unhappy anachronism, there is more than enough in his voting record to justify his inclusion in my pantheon of greedy bastards. The crux of the matter is this: Jacob Rees-Mogg combines: (1) the greed of a (hugely privileged white male) born to advantage and determined to ‘invest it’ to maximise his accumulation of further capital, with (2) the cold and calculating aptitude of a bastard willing to trade (capitalise) on the lives of those (born) less fortunate to the extent of voting for and underwriting their suffering, homelessness and premature deaths (he praised the noble compassion of the 21st century profusion of foodbanks). He must know what it is he is and does. There are no excuses. He is in my books a greedy bastard, hence this inaugural blog.