Jacob was born on 24 May 1969 in Hammersmith, London to a William Rees-Mogg, a highly influential journalist who served as editor for The Times and vice chairman of the BBC.
Having been born into a privileged family, he received some of the finest education having attended Westminster Under School, an all-boys prep school, and later attended Eton College for his secondary education. His conservative ideals were present from an early age, as one of his teachers described him as a dogmatic Thatcherite.
He was raised as a Catholic and grew up attending weekly mass; his Catholic upbringing would have a huge influence on both his political and social views.
As a teenager, he had many interests that downright bore many boys his age. For instance, at the young age of 12, he had developed a liking for trading in stocks and attending shareholders meetings. There is one famous story in which the 12-year-old attended a stockholders meeting for the now defunct General Electric Company, which he owned stocks from, and he was the only one complaining that the company’s dividends were too low.
When he was interviewed by Tatler at age 16, he was asked if he had a girlfriend he responded: 'What a QUESTION! Plenty of time for THAT sort of thing later on!'……Ask me again when I'm 30!’ Mogg would eventually get married in 2007 to Helena de Chair, who is a daughter of author and former MP Somerset de Chair. She had also known Jacob since they were both children, as she was a close childhood friend with his sister. Together the couple have six children.
Jacob continued pursuing his studies at Trinity College, Oxford where he read history and in 1991 he graduated with upper second class honors and was president of the Oxford University Conservative Association.
Upon graduation he worked in the banking sector in Britain and eventually moved to Hong Kong to work for Lloyd George Management in 1993. He then returned to London where he was appointed head of the Lloyd George Emerging Markets Fund. He, along with other employees, left the company in 2007 to establish Somerset Capital Management with Mogg as its chief executive.
He first entered into politics in 1997 when he unsuccessfully ran for MP of Central Fife in Scotland. He was seen as being too out of touch with the working class people of the constituency and was mocked for touring the constituency in a Bentley with his childhood nanny in the driver’s seat; he later refuted these claims saying that it was actually a Mercedes. In 2001, he ran again for MP but this time for The Wrekin constituency, which he lost to the sitting labour MP.
His big break in politics came in 2010 when he was elected as MP for North East Somerset during that year’s general election. Since then he became a Tory backbencher and was emerging as a rebel figure among the Tory MPs.
His conservative views such as his opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage led to him being mocked as an “eighteenth century Member of Parliament”. One thing that always put him at odds with Cameron was his opposition to Britain’s membership to the European Union.
Despite his opposition to EU membership, he was not among the famous MPs and politicians who led the Brexit campaign in the run up to the 2016 referendum. His moment in the limelight came post-Brexit as he became a backbencher against Prime Minister Theresa May, who he thinks is not delivering on the promise of a proper exit from the EU, i.e. a hard Brexit. He was then elected as the chairman of the European Research Group, a think tank for conservative MPs who are against EU membership, in January 2018. This year he also emerged as one of the favourites to succeed May as leader of the Conservative Party.
He became a prominent conservative MP who opposed Theresa May’s proposed deal which was agreed with the rest of the EU members in November 2018. As such, he was one of the 48 Tory MPs who sent a letter of no confidence to 1922 Committee Chairman, which triggered a vote of no confidence within the Tory MPs, which would go in May’s favour.
In the aftermath of May winning the vote of no confidence, Mogg initially asked her to step down as she did not have the confidence of a large majority of Tory MPs. However, he recently backed down from such rhetoric and has publicly said in Parliament that she now “commands” his confidence, seemingly accepting her deal as the only Brexit deal viable at the moment. Time will only tell if his begrudging support is genuine or if it is some political game he hopes to use for his future career.
