Rees-Mogg is referred to because of a $680,000 payment he received when the
Rees-Mogg’s finances are complex – and a matter of public record. He owns a company called Saliston, established in 1995 to hold property that originally belonged to his father. These days Saliston also holds his stake in Somerset Capital Management, an emerging markets fund he co-founded in 2007.
Somerset is managed via subsidiaries in the tax havens of the Cayman Islands and Singapore. There is nothing illegal about this and the MP has defended offshore tax havens.
But his vast wealth has left him open to criticism that he does not understand the concerns of ordinary people. He was roundly criticised in September for saying the growth in the use of food banks was “rather uplifting”. He told a newspaper this week that politicians condemning the tax scams exposed by the Paradise Papers were “hypocritical and not very bright”.
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Consider, to begin with, the matter of the Honourable Jacob William Rees-Mogg, son of a now-deceased life peer and editor of the Times. An offspring of a family who grew rich from the labour of Somerset people in their coalmines and who at school wallowed in the absorptions of Eton College before enriching himself in his City of London company by the name of Somerset Capital Management - the function of which needs little imagination. At the age of 38 Rees-Mogg failed to persuade the voters of the (at that time) obdurately Labour constituency of Central Fife to welcome him as their representative in Westminster by touring the poorer districts in what was said to be a Bentley car, accompanied by a woman who had been his ‘nanny’ during the luxury of his childhood in the family stately home. But there were other, less demanding constituencies and in the 2010 election he won the new North East Somerset constituency with a majority of almost 5000.
The point is that Jacob Rees –Mogg is also noted for being the very opposite of Jeremy Corbyn for his appearance, with his double breasted suit immaculately smooth and controlled, an appropriate tie and shirt and hair. How significant is this in relation to his performance? One of his campaigns as an MP was to legislate so that the county of Somerset should have its own time zone, 15 minutes behind London. He supports zero hours contracts for their ‘flexibility’, disregarding those desperate unemployed workers who have no choice but to conform to this additionally exploitative device. He is against same-sex marriage and in favour of state-financed repatriation of immigrants to return them to their ‘natural homelands’. And, in case it is not by now obvious, he describes himself as ‘a monarchist’. All of which emphasises that it is most urgently obvious that all leaders must be judged on matters other than their appearance.
http://socialiststandardmyspace.blogspot.com/2016/09/how-do-you-like-your-leaders-2016.html
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