Jacob Rees Mogg’s rules of grammar despatched to his staff in his new role as Leader of the House of Commons have come in for considerable media commentary.
They have also been subject to some ridicule not least in twitter exchanges between Michael Rosen and myself.
Some have argued that the leaking of the rules is simply an attempt to make Rees Mogg look like a caricature old fashioned Tory and distract from his very much more serious modern Conservatism. Well, up to a point, Lord Copper.
The point is that the two go together.
Indeed Rees Mogg explained the matter very well in his 2019 volume of essays, The Victorians, in the chapter about the famous cricketer W G Grace.
Rees Mogg opens the chapter on Grace: The Superstar by noting that his life was bound up with ‘questions of class, money, etiquette, honour and raw ambition’.
Cricket was a game bound then as now by rules and regulations, indeed the Laws of Cricket as laid by Lords. Yet Grace famously did not always quite abide by them on the pitch and off the pitch his position was ambiguous too. Gentleman, like Grace, who played cricket were amateurs and took no payment except of course for expenses. Grace could not afford to do this but avoided becoming a ‘Professional’ a status of player rather less than a Gentleman by inflating his expenses and costs.
Some might call it ambiguity others hypocrisy but Rees Mogg is clear:
The Victorians loved the outward signs of gentility, epitomised in the form of the amateur who need not be paid, but they also recognised..the need for people to profit from their enterprise,
Rees Mogg goes on to argue that Grace was a mixture of ambition and pragmatism. Rees Mogg can on the one hand issue rules on grammar dating back to another age and at the same be a successful twenty-first businessman far removed from concerns of etiquette
Leave a Reply