What more can we ask of Jacob Rees-Mogg? I mean, bravo. His list of language rules was absolutely classic. In the soap opera of the news, he’s becoming as reliable a performer as the much-missed Silvio Berlusconi, who must surely be overdue a saucy Christmas special return. Maybe involving some of the newer characters. Perhaps Silvio starts stalking Meghan Markle and is discovered in a hedge in Windsor Great Park, binoculars held steadily in his non-masturbating hand.
I’m just throwing ideas out there – it’s fan fiction really – because it’s been such a tempestuous patch for the soap opera of the news. What with Brexit and Trump and Boris, some people are saying that the soap opera of the news has jumped the shark. After all, it’s not a cliffhanger if the character always falls off the cliff. It’s no good if every new episode begins with plummeting and screaming and smashing and more screaming. As the literalist didn’t complain at the public hanging, where’s the suspense?
A lot of people are really fed up of the soap opera of the news. And that’s before we get to those who claim that the soap opera of the news is actually a reflection of real events, which I personally think is an unhelpful way of viewing anything over which you have no effective control. Start thinking something like that actually matters and you’re consigning yourself to misery and rage. Hence football hooliganism.
So fair play to Jacob Rees-Mogg for calming us down with a bit of what we came for: the stereotypically stuffy, old-fashioned MP issuing a list of stuffy, old-fashioned rules about how his staff should write. This is exactly the sort of thing we all love or hate Jacob Rees-Mogg for, and if you’re one of the tiny minority who are indifferent to Jacob Rees-Mogg (and, if so, well done you because that is a masterclass in creative contrarianism), then there’s still a chance you care how English is written.
Before I slag off his stupid rules, let me start with a word in their defence: if they are rules exclusively for how letters written in Rees-Mogg’s name are to be composed, then that’s OK, I suppose. If he’s signing them, then he’s got a right to insist on whatever he wants. He could have little hearts instead of dots on the ‘i’s, and an emoticon of a face being sick instead of “Yours faithfully” if that’s how he wants to come across. And anyway, maybe it’s part of some long-running bet – a sort of reverse of that kids’ TV game Bogies – whereby, if he can get to 2025 without ever writing the words “very” or “got”, Vladimir Putin will give him a billion pounds. He can’t risk a slovenly aide queering a sweet deal like that.
But, if it’s not that, his rules puzzle me. Rees-Mogg seems quite keen on Britain, doesn’t he? Some would say that the application of his political vision is ruining Britain; it could also be argued that the Britain he likes is a dated and rose-tinted image, or just the Britain of the rich and posh; nevertheless I’d be surprised if he doesn’t, at the very least, sincerely think he likes Britain.
Assuming so, he must be proud of the English language. It is the country’s most unarguably successful export – the most widely spoken language in history, an unequalled vector for communication and art. And yet his approach to it is the antithesis of the spirit that has made it great. In the English language, there are no rules that supersede usage. If the majority of speakers and writers start using “hopefully” to mean “it is to be hoped”, rather than “in a hopeful way”, then that becomes the word’s primary definition. The speakers have spoken and the rest is linguistic history.
Rees-Mogg’s discomfort with his tongue’s bottom-up usage flexibility is laid bare in his restrictive stipulations. He doesn’t want “hopefully” to be used at all. On some level, he obviously accepts that its meaning has changed but, for the crime of undergoing that change, the word is excised entirely.
This is strange in light of his belief in free-market economics. The human consequences of unfettered corporate greed, of millions of people unsheltered by the state from economic misfortune and powerful financial interests, are arguably almost as bad as a full-blown grocer’s apostrophe pandemic, yet in the former arena, he thinks it unwise to intervene. The livelihoods of people in depressed areas must trust to luck, but in order to ensure the use of imperial rather than metric units in departmental memos, he is willing to exercise ministerial power.
It’s a bit crazy. On the one hand, the tender concern for the trappings of the old days – the clothes, the accent, the patterns of speech, the nanny, the fervent religiosity – and, on the other, heartless libertarianism and opportunistic populism. Even if he doesn’t see the NHS, a tradition of trade unionism or centuries of immigration as aspects of the nation that he wants to conserve, he must realise that his Edwardian vision of Britain is also threatened by the mercilessness of the rightwing position.
Without union with Scotland and a stable climate, there is no recognisable United Kingdom and there will be no more cricket on village greens. This is the future he toys with when he pushes for a no-deal Brexit or meets the likes of Steve Bannon. His Christian faith compels him to oppose abortion, but not to advocate a society that redistributes its wealth to protect the vulnerable. Surely his commitment to the sanctity of human life shouldn’t be restricted to the foetal stage?
This vision of conservatism is all over the place. Calling it cruel makes it sound too organised. It’s inconsistent and muddle-headed, seemingly based on little more than a childlike attraction to the aesthetics of poshness, like wearing a bow-tie to eat trifle. In formulating his entire political stance, he has failed to observe the only one of his rules with which I wholeheartedly agree: “CHECK your work.”
