Rats in a Sack: Rees-Mogg makes a surprising Discovery

A treat is in store for TV viewers as it emerges Jacob Rees-Mogg is in talks with the streamer Discovery+ to produce a fly-on-the-wall reality show about his home life with heiress wife Helena de Chair and their six children.

“Jacob is a divisive, fascinating character who lives an old-fashioned life and TV producers think a fly-on-the-wall series could be a hit,” a ‘telly source’, who may or may not exist, tells the Sun.

“He is very well-spoken, staunchly religious, speaks fluent Latin and not afraid to air his views, which makes for a unique watch.”

Sounds fantastic! And a real fit with other Discovery+ reality shows such as Seeking Brother Husband (“polyandrous families decide to bring new brother-husbands into their lives”), Naked and Afraid of Love (“sixteen sexy singles bare it all for love”) and Milf Manor (“hot single mums hunt for love”).

Nigel Farage’s return as leader of Reform UK – not actually a party, but a business owned by one N. Farage – may give it a poll boost, but what about those millions of women who were being won over by Richard Tice’s swoonworthy looks?

Just a couple of weeks ago the Daily Express’ Nichi Hodgson was reporting how Tice’s appearance was winning over the female vote in a piece which read like someone had typed ‘write about Richard Tice in the manner of Jilly Cooper’ into a piece of AI software.

“Mr Big Dicky Tice harks back to a golden time – when women were mere housewives fantasising about owning a vacuum cleaner of their own, and political leaders were the gentleman-heroes able to promise – and then deliver – them,” wrote Hodgson.

“We’ve all been there. Feeling a little desperate, we plump for the man we can’t stand, on account of there being something perversely sexy about choosing the Bad Boy that could shake up our lives. Come Election Day, if even just one per cent of the currently undecided female voters were gripped in a similar fashion, that could give Tice the support he needs to become a credible, and very present figure in the landscape of future UK politics.”

Alas, the party is no longer Big Dicky’s but Farage’s – a man younger than Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp and George Clooney.

Speaking of Tom Cruise, he almost made an unlikely appearance in the election campaign this week – accidentally trying to enter Rishi Sunak’s car after landing at the London Heliport in Battersea. One is a pint-sizer famous for impossible missions; the other is… etc and so on.

More sad news for readers of the Express, who are to be denied the views of outgoing assistant editor Asa Bennett.

Bennett, who was Liz Truss’s chief speechwriter during the entirety of her triumphant 50 days in Downing Street, joined the Express last November and used his experience of matters of state to pen such articles as “Quiz: Who said it – Rishi Sunak or Star Wars?”. Bennett was the ultimate Brexit fan in a previous spell at the Daily Telegraph, writing pieces with headlines such as “Boris Johnson can conquer more than Brexit as the new Alexander the Great”.

Now, after less than eight months at the Express, he’s left to become associate director of communications for fundraising website GoFundMe. Lucky them!

Meanwhile, over at the increasingly unhinged Telegraph, forecasts of life under a Keir Starmer government are beginning to resemble the works of Hieronymus Bosch.

Janet Daley claims that this “this facile election shows Britain’s democratic process is a pitiful sham” while Sherelle Jacobs, under the headline “The public is about to discover just how dangerous Starmer’s ‘centrists’ really are” reckons that “fanatical neo-Blairites” are “plotting class war on the elderly, and much more”.

Still, it’s all relatively mild compared to Allister Heath’s “Starmer’s sinister plan for Britain will end the country as we knew it”.

Most tortured analogy of the election campaign so far comes from Luke Pollard, Labour’s shadow armed forces minister, speaking on Times Radio about a poll predicting a landslide victory bigger than 1997.

“Polls are very much like an aftershave – sweet to smell, but really dangerous to swallow,” he mused.

Encouraging the Conservatives to start behaving with dignity ahead of a likely period in opposition, Times columnist Matthew Parris this week pointed to history.

“From the opposition benches the Tories will face a party untested in government for well over a decade, led by someone who has never even been a minister,” he wrote. “That’s not to Starmer’s discredit – Margaret Thatcher was essentially untested too. Is Starmer going to enjoy her luck, when for three years she faced a useless opposition led by Michael Foot?”.

Or indeed Tony Blair’s luck when, for his first four years in power he faced a useless opposition led by William Hague, he may have added – except the hapless Hague is Parris’ fellow Times columnist!