Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said Reform UK’s manifesto is a “whole load of nice-sounding pledges” that don’t add up – then joked the right-wing party had taken his “best policies”.
The Brexiteer is facing a battle for his political future in North East Somerset and Hanham where regional mayor Dan Norris is projected to win the seat for Labour, according to the latest polls.
Canvassing on Tuesday, Mr Rees-Mogg, who has held the seat since 2010, came across voters in the constituency who said they’d be voting for Nigel Farage’s Reform UK.
It comes after the party released its so-called “contract for the people” with policies set to appeal to right-wing voters, including pulling Britain out of the European Convention on Human Rights and scrapping net zero targets.
Speaking to The Independent, Mr Rees-Mogg, who is a well-known admirer of Mr Farage, dismissed the party’s manifesto and described some of its representatives as “nutty candidates who like Hitler”.
But when discussing some of the policies, including increased spending on defence and scrapping 20mph speed limits, he joked: “They are cribbing from me – they have stolen all my best policies.”
He later added: “The broad Tory family shares a lot of things positions in common, and that’s why I’m keen the Tory family should be reunited. It’s obviously not going to happen before the election but try and do it after the election would be a good thing.”
Reform UK, Mr Rees-Mogg said, faced the problem of being a new party with “no time to think things through” and no prospect of getting into government.
“So it puts together a whole load of nice-sounding pledges,” he said. “Even in the very unlikely event Reform won the election, they wouldn’t happen because they don’t actually add up.”
He said the party lacked the infrastructure to “filter out really bad and ill thought-through ideas”, and did not hold back on the party’s 609 candidates after one, Jack Aaron, made comments online saying Hitler was “brilliant” at using his personality to inspire people into action.
Mr Aaron, a psychologist, has since defended himself, saying he was not implying Hitler was a good person to admire.
Mr Rees-Mogg said: “They have got all these nutty candidates who like Hitler, you know, that is not serious. And people voting for them know that they are not serious or going to win.”
On Tuesday, Mr Farage threatened to report the vetting company hired by Reform UK to the police for failing to run background checks on all candidates before the snap summer election.
Mr Farage is forecast to win a seat in Clacton for Reform, which he declared was “now the real opposition” after a YouGov poll had Reform ahead of the Conservatives for the first time.
Mr Rees-Mogg said: “I’d like Nigel [Farage] to play a senior role in the Conservative party.”
Asked if he could be the next leader, he said: “I think it’s difficult [for Mr Farage] to be the next leader of the Tory party when he’s telling anybody not to vote for it – that creates certainly at least a short-term barrier.
“I would like to see the right, the broad conservative family come together and I would expect there would be a role for Nigel within that, I want there to be a role for Nigel within that.”
Also standing for North East Somerset and Hanham is Dan Norris for Labour, Dine Romero for Lib Dems, Paul MacDonnell for Reform UK, Edmund Cannon for the Green Party, Nicholas Hales, independent, and Barmy Brunch for Monster Raving Loony Party.