Jacob Rees-Mogg warns Theresa May to deliver hard Brexit

Tory Brexit cheerleader Jacob Rees-Mogg last night warned Theresa May she would be making a ‘grave error’ if she failed to deliver the ‘hard Brexit’ he favours.

And he failed to kill off claims that he could replace her in No 10 if she defies his hard-line stance by saying he was ‘flattered’ by claims he had overtaken Boris Johnson as the leadership frontrunner.

He also compared himself to Michael Heseltine, who famously denied planning to challenge Margaret Thatcher – before doing precisely that.

According to bookmakers, City tycoon and devout Catholic Mr Rees-Mogg is strong favourite to be the next Tory leader, with his reputation enhanced by his cool response to protesters who disrupted his speech in Bristol.

In a wide-ranging interview with The Mail on Sunday on the eve of this week’s Cabinet showdown on Britain’s trading status when we leave the EU, Mr Rees-Mogg:

l Warned Mrs May against a Brexit ‘fudge’, saying she must follow Mrs Thatcher’s dictum of avoiding ‘middle, muddle, fiddle fuddle’;

l Suggested it was pro ‘soft Brexit’ Chancellor Philip Hammond – not him – who was undermining Mrs May;

l Urged her to resist pressure from Mr Hammond to retain partial access to the EU Customs Union;

l Hit back at a jibe by a Tory foe that he is ‘a barmaid’s idea of a gentleman’.

Mr Rees-Mogg’s growing power as leader of the hard-line group of Brexit Tory MPs, the European Research Group, has caused alarm among ‘soft Brexit’ Tories. 

Former Minister Anna Soubry has said she will quit the party if Mr Rees-Mogg, who opposes abortion, including in rape cases, and also opposed gay marriage, becomes leader. 

A senior Minister said last night: ‘Anna is not alone. Many of us would never support a Rees-Mogg government. His views are from the Ark and would make Jeremy Corbyn in No 10 a certainty.’

Among the Conservatives appalled by the growing influence in Downing Street of the so-called ‘Mogg-mentum’ phenomenon is Mr Hammond. 

One ally of the Chancellor said: ‘The PM is so weak, it’s as if Rees-Mogg is the de facto PM.’

Pressed to respond by this newspaper, Mr Rees-Mogg said: ‘It’s preposterous. I wouldn’t dream of ordering the Prime Minister.’ 

He was simply trying to help ‘shape Brexit’ and ‘completely entitled to express my opinion’.

But he made it clear Mrs May faces trouble if reports she plans to back calls by Mr Hammond for the UK to retain partial access to the Customs Union after Brexit are true. 

‘It is not consistent with the Prime Minister’s avowed policy, so I don’t expect it to happen. It would be a grave error because it would fail to get the benefits of Brexit. Middle, muddle, fiddle, fuddle as Margaret Thatcher used to say.’

According to bookmakers, City tycoon and devout Catholic Mr Rees-Mogg is strong favourite to succeed Theresa May

Was he suggesting Mrs May was finished if she didn’t do what he wanted? 

‘Of course I’m not. She has my unconditional support. Leadership elections tend to do the party – and the country, harm.’

How did he feel about overtaking Boris in the leadership stakes? ‘Very flattering. I know this is the Michael Heseltine formula but I just can’t see the circumstances.’

Lord Heseltine famously used the same mantra when asked if he planned to oust Mrs Thatcher. 

It turned out he was fibbing. He brought her down in 1990, but was beaten to No 10 by John Major.

Mr Rees-Mogg is also equivocal when asked why he has never said he does not want to be leader. 

‘Want is the wrong word. As you see in Mrs May it is a duty rather than a want.’ 

His reply leaves open the prospect that if fellow Tory MPs ask him to be leader, he will regard it as his ‘duty’ to accept.

But he leaves no room for doubt that the political loathing between him and Mr Hammond is mutual and launched a new attack on Mr Hammond over claims that the Treasury tried to ‘fiddle the figures’ in a leaked Brexit report that forecast dire economic consequences for leaving the EU.

Asked if he blamed Mr Hammond, he said: ‘Either he is not in control of his department or he is allowing his department to do this. He needs to answer the questions as to what the Treasury is up to.’

Mr Rees-Mogg said his comments were ‘more in response to what is going on from the Treasury than [me] trying to push the Prime Minister in any direction. I am supporting her. Others may not be.’

Either Mr Hammond was in breach of his duty to obey the Cabinet’s ‘collective responsibility’ rule – or he was ‘allowing his department to freelance’. 

Neither was acceptable.

Mr Rees-Mogg said he ‘could not be more different to Donald Trump’, but said that in Britain, as in the US, there was a feeling that the ‘Establishment’ had not given ordinary people what they wanted.

Mr Rees-Mogg dismissed writer and ex-Tory MP Matthew Parris’s description of him as ‘a barmaid’s idea of a gentleman,’ saying: ‘I take it as a compliment. Unlike Mr Parris, I’m not snooty about barmaids.’ 

Tories ‘face ruin if they oust second female PM’ 

Mid Bedfordshire MP Nadine Dorries (pictured) warned male Tories that the party would be in ‘the s***… if TM [Theresa May] is ousted by male MPs’

By Brendan Carlin, Political Correspondent for The Mail on Sunday

Tory MPs have clashed over a warning that the party faces ruin if its male MPs bring down Theresa May just as they did Margaret Thatcher.

The exchanges on a private WhatsApp messaging group for Conservative MPs were leaked to The Mail on Sunday last night.

They show how Mid Bedfordshire MP Nadine Dorries warned male Tories that the party would be in ‘the s***… if TM [Theresa May] is ousted by male MPs’. 

She added that male Tory MPs toppling their first female leader in 1990 may have been ‘inevitable’, but ‘removing two will be viewed as something else entirely’.

Women voters would take revenge, she claimed.

But St Austell and Newquay Tory MP Steve Double claimed it was ‘bonkers’ to argue ‘the only reason we shouldn’t oust the PM is because she’s a woman’. 

Boris ally who denies being ‘revolt trigger’

By Glen Owen for The Mail on Sunday

An ally of Boris Johnson last night denied claims at Westminster that he was considering resigning to trigger a leadership contest against Theresa May.

Security Minister Ben Wallace, a former officer in the Scots Guards, was named by a senior party source as being ‘on a watch list’ held by Tory whips.

But last night Mr Wallace protested his loyalty to the Prime Minister, saying: ‘I am doing the job I love. Which in politics is rare. The rows are something I couldn’t be less interested in.’

Security Minister Ben Wallace, a former officer in the Scots Guards, was named by a senior party source as being ‘on a watch list’ held by Tory whips

When asked about the ‘watch list’, he said: ‘It isn’t the whips who believe that, I know for a fact. It is others.’

Another Minister on the whips’ watch list is Defence Minister Tobias Ellwood, who is understood to be frustrated at not being promoted to the Cabinet in Mrs May’s botched reshuffle last month. He is angry at the Treasury over proposed defence cuts and sources say he has a ‘tense’ relationship with his Secretary of State, Gavin Williamson.

No 10 considered moving Ellwood in the reshuffle due to the ‘terrible personal chemistry’ between him and Mr Williamson.

Now party figures fear Ellwood may be tempted to resign.

The 52-year-old, who was a captain in the Royal Green Jackets, became a national hero during last year’s terrorist attack on Parliament, when he gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to police officer Keith Palmer, who later died of his injuries.

Mr Ellwood told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Resign? Resign? At the very moment when there’s a duty to step forward? No. I’m donning my suit of armour, with the S of S [Secretary of State] for the mother of all battles with the Treasury.’

Far-Left thug is middle class boy 

Josh Connor, 24, (above with girlfriend Andreea Dumitrache) was at the centre of the melee which erupted as the Tory MP gave a talk to the politics society at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol

With his hood up and wearing dark glasses, he appears to be the terrifying face of hard-Left anarchy. 

But the protester caught on camera as part of a mob wrecking a speech by Jacob Rees-Mogg is a middle-class university graduate whose grandmother has branded him ‘a naughty boy’. 

Josh Connor, 24, was at the centre of the melee which erupted as the Tory MP gave a talk to the politics society at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol on his life and beliefs on Friday night. 

The event was dramatically interrupted as Connor and others chanted ‘No platform for racists, no platform for homophobes’ and branded Mr Rees-Mogg ‘scum’. 

Video footage shows Jeremy Corbyn supporter Connor – who graduated from UWE in Digital Communication and Media – swinging a punch during the fracas, apparently in retaliation after his 25-year-old girlfriend, Romanian-born student Andreea Dumitrache, was struck in the face by a man in a white shirt. 

Connor’s family home – a £300,000 detached house – is in a leafy middle-class suburb in Nottingham, where he went to school. 

Last night his software engineer father Patrick said ‘I really don’t think I can help you – I’m very busy’ and closed the door. 

But Josh’s 82-year-old grandmother Jillian Connor admonished him, saying of the incident: ‘I saw it and I thought surely not. You naughty boy.’ 

Speaking from her cottage in Kent, she added: ‘He is a very keen Socialist, slightly to the left of Trotsky, he is an ardent Labour supporter. 

‘Who doesn’t get cross with Rees-Mogg occasionally? I can’t say I’m surprised, but I thought [Connor] was maturing.’ 

Connor was unavailable for comment yesterday.  

Theresa is not natty, but she’s our best bet 

By James Cleverly MP, Conservative Party Deputy Chairman

Anyone who has caught a glimpse of the news since Christmas will think this Government is only interested in two things: Brexit and who leads the Conservative Party.

It feels as if whatever we try to do, everything is viewed through the prism of how we leave the European Union and whether Theresa May is up or down.

To be fair, we don’t help ourselves. 

If I had a pound for every flappy-mouthed ‘friend’ of him or ‘source close to’ her who’s given me a headache this past month, I’d probably be on my way to matching the football Premier League’s record-breaking January transfer window.

James Cleverly MP (pictured) writes: ‘It feels as if whatever we try to do, everything is viewed through the prism of how we leave the European Union and whether Theresa May is up or down’

But look beyond the wall of sound created by unnamed colleagues blabbing away, and there is plenty this Government is doing for voters.

We’ve got unemployment down to a 40-year low, the highest number in real jobs since 1975; we’ve increased the National Living Wage and cut income tax to put extra cash in your pay packets; we’ve put a further £2.8 billion into our NHS, £1.3 billion for schools and cut stamp duty for 95 per cent of first-time buyers. 

And in December, the Prime Minister achieved something that many of the sneerers and doom-mongerers thought would never happen – she and the EU agreed sufficient progress had been made in the first round of our Brexit talks.

Leadership isn’t about soaking up the glory when things are easy. It’s about picking up the mantle after a national debate that divided the nation.

It’s calmly and carefully planning for the future of the UK outside the European Union. And it’s grafting to deliver the crucial progress every step of the way.

Whether you voted Leave or Remain, we can all agree that Brexit is going to change this country. 

Theresa May has set out her plan to overcome the challenges and grasp the opportunities that Brexit provides. Getting on with this huge job – that’s leadership. 

So when you see some commentator telling the Prime Minister she should do this or say that, just remember what she has on her plate and the successes she has already achieved.

Triggering Article 50, setting out a plan for the future, successfully negotiating with Parliament and the 27 other nations to complete the first half of the Brexit deal. 

And through all this, never losing sight of the promise she made on the steps of Downing Street to get things done at home and build a stronger economy and fairer society for everyone.

We have the right person in charge to keep up this work and focus on the job in hand, as we build that country that truly works for everyone.

She might not have the natty chant or the online warriors, but this is a Prime Minister who will never stop fighting for you or this country she loves. 

And I am proud to stand alongside her in that fight.