page_title: Jacob Rees-Mogg
section_title: Cameron government (2010–2016)
hierarchical_section_title: Jacob Rees-Mogg / Parliament / As backbencher / Cameron government (2010–2016)
caption_attribution_description: Conservative - North East Somerset
context_page_description: Jacob William Rees-Mogg is a British politician serving as Leader of the House of Commons and Lord President of the Council since 2019, and who has served as Member of Parliament for North East Somerset since 2010. A member of the Conservative Party, Rees-Mogg is a social conservative.
  Rees-Mogg was born in Hammersmith, London, and educated at Eton College. He then studied History at Trinity College, Oxford, and was President of the Oxford University Conservative Association. He worked in the City of London and in Hong Kong for Lloyd George Management until 2007, then co-founded a hedge fund management business Somerset Capital Management LLP. He has amassed a significant fortune: his estimated net worth in 2016 was from £55 million to £150 million, including his wife's expected inheritance. Moving into politics, he 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. Within the Conservative Party, he joined the traditionalist and socially conservative Cornerstone Group.
context_section_description: The ConservativeHome blog rates Rees-Mogg as one of the Conservatives' most rebellious MPs. He voted against the government whip on the Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, the October 2011 European Union Referendum Motion and the House of Lords Reform Bill 2012.
  In the House of Commons, Rees-Mogg gained a reputation for his humorous speeches and ability to filibuster. He helped filibuster the Daylight Saving Bill 2010–12 and the Sustainable Livestock Bill 2010–12, thus preventing their passage through Parliament. In his long speech on the Sustainable Livestock Bill, he recited poetry; spoke of the superior quality of Somerset eggs, and mentioned the Empress of Blandings, a fictional pig who won silver at the Shropshire County Show three years in a row, before moving on to talk about the sewerage system and the Battle of Agincourt. He also attempted to amend the Daylight Saving Bill to give the county of Somerset its own time zone, fifteen minutes behind London.
  In a December 2011 debate on London Local Authorities Bill, he said that council officials with the power to issue on-the-spot fines should be made to wear bowler hats. In February 2012, he used the word "floccinaucinihilipilification"—meaning "the habit of considering as worthless"—during a parliamentary debate; it was noted as the longest word then uttered on the floor of the House of Commons.
  In May 2013, he addressed the annual dinner held by the Traditional Britain Group, a far-right group that calls for non-white Britons to be deported. Rees-Mogg had been informed as to the nature of the group by anti-fascist group Searchlight prior to his attendance. After the dinner, he informed the press that although he had been informed of the group's views, he had "never been a member or supporter" of them.
  In January 2014, he dismissed the sum of £250,000 spent on MPs' portraits as trivial by saying "I'm all for saving money, saving money right, left and centre, but this is chicken feed". In December 2014, Rees-Mogg was reported to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for speaking in debates on tobacco, mining, and oil and gas without first verbally declaring he was a founding partner and director of Somerset Capital, which manages multimillion-pound investments in these sectors. The Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, Kathryn Hudson, decided that no wrongdoing had been committed and thus no investigation would take place.
  According to The Daily Telegraph, Rees-Mogg's extra-parliamentary work took up 476 hours, or 9 hours per week, in 2014.
caption: Rees-Mogg in 2013
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