Rees-Mogg: Burnham’s Gogglebox appearance is ‘unutterably undignified’
Jacob Rees-Mogg has criticised the Prime Minister for appearing on Celebrity Gogglebox, claiming that such behaviour is undignified and trivialises his role.
He said on GB News: “I haven’t stopped groaning inwardly at the awfulness of it. Can you imagine any of our great figures from the past? Our noble prime ministers: Walpole, Pitt the Elder, Pitt the Younger, Palmerston, Disraeli, Gladstone, Lloyd George, terrible liberal though he was, Churchill, Thatcher, Attlee, a socialist, any of them, behaving in this unutterably undignified and fundamentally childish way.
“These people, this man is meant to lead our country. He’s meant to represent us on the world stage. He is meant to have a presence in the world, in the nation, to the nation, for the nation. Instead, he behaves like some pathetic little teenager or a rock star.
“We’ve mocked up some other celebrities that he might look like, which we’re going to show as we go past. But he’s the Prime Minister, and this is really important. There is a fundamental difference between a politician and a celebrity. If you’re a celebrity, your job is to appeal to absolutely everybody because that’s the way you sell your film.
“You fill your theatre. You get an audience for your game show. You turn out to be some great star like Marilyn Monroe. You want everyone to like you. But if you’re a politician, you have a very different job.
“First of all, you are following guiding lights of ideological principle to do what you think is in the nation’s interest, which other people must disagree with. If they don’t disagree with you, you have no principles. There is no purpose to you. That is the first point. You need that ideological base.
“Secondly, as Prime Minister, you have to be able to say no. Everybody in the country, every man Jack of us wants money spent on some good cause. It may be the potholes in our road. It may be tuition fees for our children. Heaven knows.
“But we have to be told no difficult decisions need to be made. If you’re making difficult decisions and if you have a guiding light of ideology, you are a politician. But people will not agree with your ideology, and they will not agree with the hard decisions that you have taken. And therefore, a percentage of the population must, must dislike you.
“And if they don’t, you are doing nothing, and you are not leading, and you cannot lead, because there is no prime minister in the world who has ever succeeded simply by making easy decisions. Now our nation has £3 trillion worth of debt, nearly 100% of GDP, a deficit of £130 billion, taxation the highest it’s been since the war. Need I go on?
“A threat from Russia, a threat from China, a threat from Iran. And what is the Prime Minister doing here, sitting on a sofa, watching television, having too much to drink, eating pork scratchings – heaven help us. It is the most shamefully trivial, ridiculous, childish behaviour by a British Prime Minister in the history of that office.”
