“Basically I want people to be able to get on with their lives without the government bossing them about. I’m all in favour of nannies but not the nanny state.”
Rees-Mogg was praised for this riposte delivered to David Dimbleby in an exchange on the BBC's Question Time programme.
JRM: "Heathrow is the most convenient airport in London. I realise that in Slough this may not please everybody. I used to live not a million miles from Slough with the airplanes going over. I must confess they did not prove too bothersome there."
DD: "Eton, is that?"
JRM: "That's absolutely right. I was at school with your son."
“The requirement not to be rude about judges applies only to judges in this country. It does not apply to judges in the EU, so let me be rude about them. Let me indulge in the floccinaucinihilipilification of EU judges”.
The inclusion of this 29-letter word made headlines for being the then longest word ever recorded in Hansard. He later said of the word, “it’s not too bad, all it means is the action or habit of estimating as worthless.”
“He’s friends with Mr [Piers] Morgan and Mr Putin, so he keeps very fine company."
Asked by Nigel Farage whether Monsier Barnier is “playing with a straight bat”, Rees Mogg retorted: “Well I very much doubt he’s a cricketer, and if he is he plays French cricket which is a rather mutated version of the real thing.”
“What’s so peculiar about this new party is that it wants to call itself the Democrats and the first thing it wishes to do is overturn a democratic decision. Their proposed name ought to be the Oligarchs.”
“The right to bear arms is in our own Bill of Rights, where there is the right to bear arms because of the need to maintain a Protestant militia—which fortunately has gone out of fashion in more modern times.”
Rees-Mogg caused guffaws in Parliament earlier this year, when he politely took aim at the length of a Jeremy Corbyn speech: “He said about 10 minutes ago ‘in conclusion’,’” Rees-Mogg joked. “I fear as time goes past he may be in danger of inadvertently having misled the House.”
“How are we going to revive this economy if we do not encourage the small business man, and the tall business man, too?”
“Popularity in politics is very much here today and gone tomorrow. What I think matters – and I might begin to sound like Tony Benn in this – is the issues and not the personalities."