On Tuesday night, the current Tory government faced a crucial vote on whether the House of Commons would back a bill to block a no-deal Brexit. It was a long day, for sure, and current Leader of the House of Commons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, was pictured slouching on the front bench, possibly asleep. He was told by opposition members to “Sit up, man!” and by Tuesday night, Twitter was full of memes with Rees-Mogg’s face all over them. The most politically astute one used the outline of his body to show how the Tories have lost their majority since 2017, a majority that was tenuous at best and required a collaboration with Northern Ireland’s DUP in order to get any kind of working majority, and which now lies at a minus figure, leading to speculation over a vote of no confidence in the government.
Timeline of the government majority#BrexitShambles #Brexit #ConservativeParty #ReesMogg pic.twitter.com/EhNDe0mWZl
— Jun Kit Man (@Jun_Man) September 4, 2019
The worst, homophobic, memes show Boris Johnson’s face in Rees-Mogg’s lap, because we’re supposed to find the idea of blow jobs between two men funny and outrageous and something we can only imagine our enemies doing (see also similar memes featuring Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin). Even the most innocuous memes, like the “draw me like one of your French girls” ones, are intended to draw laughter. And I’m just not here for it.
I know some people – my own partner included – will say that to mock something like this is a way of removing its sting, a way of showing up someone like Rees-Mogg. But it is also a way of making us all feel better, maybe even to make us feel like we’re doing something other than just railing in the dark feeling powerless. It is a way of banding “us” together against “them”, too; a simple retweet shows which side you’re on.
But to solely mock Rees-Mogg is to underestimate what a danger he has the potential to be if he keeps his role in government. His voting record is terrible; even within the Tory party he is particularly right-wing and very socially conservative. He consistently voted against same-sex marriage, he wants to repeal the Human Rights Act, and he voted against raising benefit levels on more than one occasion. In his private life, he is known for being a staunch Catholic and against abortion; I don’t care if he believes that for himself and his own family, but when it spills over into national policy it’s a problem.
Rees-Mogg stands to make a lot of money from Brexit; he has already increased his wealth by millions of pounds since the referendum due to moving investments from the UK to Dublin (something which he swears isn’t related to Brexit, but…). He draws down a monthly salary that most of us could only dream of. He surely doesn’t care on one level whether the government gets its way or not – if he lost his job as MP he’s unlikely to be “signing on” a couple of weeks later, trying desperately to tick the right boxes to receive his meagre benefits.
I’m not against memes at all, and on one level I get it. It is funny to see the silly Postman Pat-esque Victorian fella slouching on the front bench, possibly asleep, looking like he has nothing better to do, but to make memes depends on a level of privilege where Rees-Mogg and his ilk don’t pose an immediate threat to you and your life. We’re already nearly a decade into austerity, which has killed anything from an extra 45,000 to 130,000 people per year thanks to lessened spending on health and social care. We’re hearing experts tell us of shortages after Brexit on everything from food to medicines.
Lastly, I find it insulting towards British voters that someone can look as if they have such little regard for an important debate where an important vote will take place. The rest of us wouldn’t get away with it in our working lives, so why should someone who is supposedly standing for the best interests of his constituents? Making a meme of him does a disservice to us, it writes off this laissez-faire attitude as just another day in Rees-Mogg’s life when actually, it is anything but.