Jacob Rees-Mogg lacks common decency as well as sense

Calum S. K. Day-Lewis
Nov 6 · 3 min read

What a gift Jacob Rees-Mogg is for the Labour Party. In an election where Labour are trying to paint the Tories as the born-to-rule elite, basking in their superiority, Rees-Mogg has stripped bare for a life drawing session, embodying a caricature of Labour’s depiction more callous than they could ever have dreamt.

Whilst giving a lecture to the dead on common sense, Rees-Mogg perfectly exhibits just how much he lacks it himself. In this election, the Conservatives are trying to appeal to the working classes and are thus attempting to unshackle themselves of the public perception that they’re the nasty party, for the rich and privileged. So what does the posh-top-hat-wearing-toff do? He claims that if the working class victims of Grenfell fire were as clever as he, they’d all have been fine.

So entitled and lacking in empathy is Jacob that instead of, like any decent human would, understanding it as an unimaginable horror that nobody could predict their response to, clever Jacob would have known better than those idiotic corpses.

The irony being, Mogg is clearly so lacking in common sense that, rather than go along with the Tory farce as the party of the people, he’ll become the human mannequin displaying austerity at its finest. Though he was patently wrong that the victims of the Grenfell fire lacked sense for obeying the instructions of those who’s job it is to rescue people from fires, he is right that it wouldn’t have happened to him.

It wouldn’t have happened to him, not because he’s smarter but because he’s richer and his type broadly look out for themselves. It wouldn’t have happened to him, because, born into privilege, he would never have had to live in a building so remarkably unsafe.

You’d think that being born with a silver spoon in your mouth, you might express gratitude that you’ve not had to endure the hardship of those less fortunate. Nope, not Mogg. If the poor die so that the rich can save a few pennies by covering the cracks of withering council buildings in cladding with a flammability akin to petrol, so be it. Collateral damage.

It’s not as if this disaster can be brushed aside as an unavoidable mistake to learn from. What is entirely unforgivable is that the residents of Grenfell Tower had repeatedly written to the council, flagging their concerns about the safety of their building, their home. Definitive proof that in Tory Britain, if you’re poor, your voice isn’t to be heard. Or worse still, heard yet ignored.

Grenfell Tower is in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, one of the wealthiest local authorities in the country; it has the greatest gap between rich and poor anywhere in Britain. Grenfell was home to poorer, mainly ethnic-minority residents. Would this have happened in an expensive block of flats? No. Would the voices of the wealthy have been ignored? No.

So thanks Jacob Rees-Mogg for doing Labour’s work for them. Thank you for embodying a caricature of the Tory party’s soul: callous, entitled and lacking empathy. Thank you Jacob Rees-Mogg for displaying such an unfathomable lack of common sense.

Calum S. K. Day-Lewis

My views on politics and some things less boring

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