On a very odd day, perhaps the weirdest moment on my show last night was when Jacob Rees-Mogg effectively blamed the current Brexit mess – for which some would say he shares some responsibility (ahem) – on David Cameron and Sir Oliver Letwin, for making it very hard to call general elections.
The chairman of the Tory Brexiter European Research Group said that he would probably not have voted against the prime minister’s deal in January, when she held her first meaningful vote, if she had made that vote a confidence motion – such that losing it would have triggered a general election and seen him thrown out of the party he loves.
It is a pretty rum state of affairs when Rees-Mogg bemoans that Theresa May could not hold died-in-the-wool Brexit rebels like himself to ransom, because of the Fixed Term Parliament Act that was the progeny of the 2010 coalition government, led by Cameron and with Letwin as midwife.
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