If Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg survives a wider Tory meltdown this Thursday, the puzzling pronouncement of one local voter in a Somerset pub garden could explain why.
‘I’m going to vote for Jacob. I am not necessarily voting Conservative,’ declared Nigel Pushman in between mouthfuls of chips.
‘But I’m going to vote for Jacob – he’s a very good constituency MP.’
So said quite a few people in the North-East Somerset and Hanham constituency that Sir Jacob is now battling to retain, or win for the first time as the seat’s boundaries have been changed.
In other words, anger at the antics of the national Tory Party may be outweighed on polling day by appreciation of the record of Sir Jacob, who has represented the area since 2010. Or it may not.
Checking the polls? Sir Jacob consults his mobile in the local Conservative campaign HQ
On the campaign trail – Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg points the way
As he canvassed the village of Compton Dando last week with the Mail on Sunday in tow, Sir Jacob had the bad luck to get this from the first person he spoke to:
‘I have to be totally honest with you – I have never voted anything other than Conservative.
‘This time, I have not got the foggiest idea.’
Later, the voter – Nigel Kay, 68, – revealed no marked preference for the other parties – Labour ‘are as mad as a box of frogs’ – but vented his anger at the ‘outrageous’ Tory election betting scandal and other stupidities of the governing Party.
But Sir Jacob, he said, seemed to be a ‘normal, engaging bloke’.
‘Normal’ is hardly the way ex-Cabinet Minister Sir Jacob is usually described.
In his trademark combination of double-breasted (‘not pin-striped!) suit and tie, the 55-year-old old Etonian is better known as the ‘MP for the 18th-Century’ due to his reverence for tradition and time-honoured customs.
Labour, not the usual South-West challengers the Liberal Democrats, are seen as the Party most likely to consign Sir Jacob to his beloved history.
That’s despite the fact that Labour was over 14,700 votes adrift of the Tories locally at the 2019 election.
Privately, local Tories harbour hopes that the Lib Dems will split the ‘opposition’ vote but also fear that Nigel Farage’s Reform UK could do the same to them.
Seflie please! En route to buy lunch at Greggs’ in Keynsham, Sir Jacob is asked to pose for a pic
For Dan Norris, the Labour candidate, it would be sweet revenge as he was the local MP from 1997-2010 when Sir Jacob ousted him.
Mr Norris, currently mayor of the West of England region and a former Rural Affairs Minister in Gordon Brown’s government, appears less in thrall to tradition.
After Sir Jacob observed on a BBC Radio Bristol debate how even ancient Roman philosopher Cicero had lamented the decline in the quality of politicians, Mr Norris said ‘the cost of living crisis’ – not philosophers – was what the electorate was thinking about.
However, fervent Brexiteer Sir Jacob was jubilant that Mr Norris conceded that Labour’s key policy of levying VAT on private school fees was only possible because the UK had quit the EU and its tight control on varying VAT rates.
Whatever the result on Thursday, Sir Jacob has no intention of quitting his beloved Somerset home.
‘Our family roots here go back hundreds of years,’ he said.
Which will be a relief to one lady in Compton Dando last week.
‘The only people who knock on doors here are Jacob and Jehovah’s Witnesses,’ she sighed.