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Slipshod Rees-Mogg left with egg on his face

The former cabinet minister is a stickler for using correct English - except when it comes to his own social media posts

Jacob Rees-Mogg. Image: The New European

Former cabinet minister turned short-lived reality TV star Jacob Rees-Mogg was fuming this week over the suggestion Britain could join the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention, a tariff-free trading scheme which harmonises rules of origin within the EU and beyond to make it easier to export goods.

“Any deal that once again puts us under the yolk of the EU must be repudiated by the Conservatives whenever we are next in government, on day one,” he posted on X. “Trump shows such things are possible.”

Er… yolk? Presumably the Eton-educated former hedge fund manager meant yoke, as opposed to the yellow internal part of a bird’s egg?

Perhaps the slip was down to Rees-Mogg’s diet of two Cadbury’s Creme Eggs per day (“I have a predilection for Creme Eggs which is probably not to be encouraged,” he told the Commons in 2020, to general disinterest) or his obsession with the correct way to serve eggs at breakfast (““A very softly boiled egg is not a boiled egg at all”).

Rees-Mogg, of course, was the man who, upon being appointed leader of the House of Commons, issued his new civil servants with a strict set of rules on the usage of English, including banning the words “very”, “due to” and “ongoing”, only using imperial measurements and giving all non-titled males the suffix Esq.

Ironically, in a call for accuracy contained in his list, staff were told: “CHECK your work.” Or, presumably, they’d be left with egg on their face.

Meanwhile Spectator editor Michael Gove appeared on BBC Radio 4’s PM with all the erudition and respect for facts you’d expect from one of the architects of Brexit.

Gove deployed two quotes during his session with Evan Davies and managed to misattribute both of them. “It’s amazing what you can achieve when you don’t care who gets the credit” wasn’t Ronald Reagan, but Harry Truman. And “the only man who never makes a mistake is the man who never does anything” wasn’t Churchill but Teddy Roosevelt.

As nobody said ever: “It must be true, it’s in the Spectator”.

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