Rees Mogg Speaker Vetting Hypocrisy

Cancel culture, which was never really a thing except in the fevered minds of paranoid right wingers in our free and fearless press, is one of those mythical culture war elements that is waved at Rotten Lefties™ as a means of frightening undecided voters into backing the Brexiteer death cult that is today’s Tory party. But now the Tories are doing a little of it themselves.

As the Guardian has noted, “Guest speakers at the Cabinet Office will have their social media accounts vetted to check whether they have ever criticised government policy before they can take part in events, according to new rules”. The presence behind this needlessly draconian move appears to be the right honourable member for times long past, Jacob Rees Mogg.

There was more. “The Cabinet Office policy applies to outsiders coming into the department to take part in ‘learning and development’ events. Managers are being urged to carefully check the backgrounds of such guests, including by trawling through up to five years of posts, according to an article in the Financial Times”. Rees Mogg has let it be known that he agreed the move.

“The report quoted allies of Cabinet Office minister Jacob Rees-Mogg as saying the due diligence policy, which took effect this week, was ‘very sensible’ and should be implemented straight away, since ‘there have been far too many examples recently where essentially extremist speakers have been invited to speak to civil servants and staff networks’”.

What kind of trawling would be involved? “The checks include trawling through between three and five years of posts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and LinkedIn to search for ‘potentially problematic or controversial material that may contravene civil service values’, including criticism of government officials or policy, strong political views and ‘behaviour that might bring the civil service into disrepute’”. Civil Service values? What they?

As is usual with what passes for our current Government, someone else has to be responsible for the move. “The Cabinet Office said the policy had been ‘introduced to ensure there is a proper process for inviting speakers to talk to civil servants in the Cabinet Office, as the public rightly expects’”. Yeah, that public, they made us do it! Bullshit. This is just authoritarian overkill.

It is also hypocrisy of the most blatant kind, as observers of Rees Mogg will know. He attended the annual gathering of the Traditional Britain Group, fronted by Gregory “Lauder” Frost, an organisation that is effectively the rump of what was the Monday Club before that was expelled from the Tory party.

The expulsion was ordered by Iain Duncan Cough during his brief tenure of the party leadership: it was too extreme even for him. The TBG advocates for repatriation for migrants, although not for “Lauder” Frost, who was born in Australia. The group called the Duchess of Sussex a “mulatto”, although this characterisation was later deleted. It is a cesspit of racist bigotry.

Rees Mogg regretted his attendance. But he had been warned beforehand and took no action. His brushes with extremism did not end there: he later met Steve Bannon, a white supremacist, a virulent Islamophobe, and a misogynist. Nothing short of ethnically pure male Whitey Power will do for him. JRM is also comfortable in the company of Nigel “Thirsty” Farage.

And all too recently, he was called out by David Lammy over his liking for the pronouncements from German far right party Alternative für Deutschland. Rees Mogg tried his best to snootily sneer his way out of that one, but did not adequately address concerns that he was linked with those calling for refugees crossing the EU’s external borders to be shot.

But now, Rees Mogg will have no truck with extremists. The thought enters that this may be a highly selective search: what will ultimately prove revealing is not how many of those considered to be leaning too much to the left get speaking bans, but how many out there on the right. And the problem he has is that, now he’s laid down the rules, the world will be watching.

Of course, this could be more wasteful Tory hot air. No change there, then.

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