Really Smugg

The aquiline Jacob Rees Mogg, son of the great newspaperman Lord Rees Mogg has now laid his cards on the table. Previously thought to be one of the sounder Tory candidates, his comments to the BBC supporting the idea of a permanent Tory-Lib/Dem coalition proposed by Sir John Major, suggest that he has truly taken up the Private Eye name for his father and made it all his own. He is now sittimg smugly for a safe seat,  a seat that would be made safer of course if the remaining LibDems could be knocked out of the battle.

"I think we ought to fight the next election as a coalition. If we govern successfully as a coalition it would be absurd to oppose each other in seats like Sheffield Hallam or Somerton and Frome at the next general election, so I hope that we do get through the next five years and fight as a coalition."

He develops the theme in the House magazine today,

I expect the coalition to continue after 2015. I know I’m in a minority on this, but my view is that we will fight the next election as a coalition, because if we’ve made a success of it – which is what I expect – then it would be completely illogical to oppose, for example, Nick Clegg in Sheffield Hallam. What would the Conservative candidate say? “We’ve had this wonderful government which has done all these brilliant things, but it would have been that much better if we hadn’t had this fellow here messing about as deputy prime minister.” No, it is completely the opposite. If we govern as a coalition then I think we should fight the next election as a coalition – and I’m not exactly on the left wing of our party.

There again, I suppose he might not be so bad after all. Perhaps he is a UKIP 5th columnist. After all if he and Sir John get their way, the UKIP vote will shoot up across the country as pointed out by Lord Tebbit today.

I strongly suspect that Mr Cameron wants to make his coalition into a merger between “centre ground” conservatives and “centre ground” Lib Dems.


That would leave many Conservative voters with no choice but to support UKIP and many Lib Dem voters no choice but to support Labour

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