In recent months Jacob Rees-Mogg has kept a low profile in Westminster. The leader of the House is kept mainly these days to the confines of managing parliamentary business with the mile-long ‘Mogg conga’ queuing system last June being one of the few occasions he has returned to the limelight.
So Mr S was delighted to see the Old Etonian demonstrate he has lost none of his wit or wisdom when he came to the Commons today to field questions from backbenchers. A question by Ipswich Tom Hunt MP decrying the ‘wokeification’ of British universities offered Rees-Mogg the chance to offer his thoughts on Churchill college Cambridge potentially rebranding, 150 Oxford academics refusing to teach until Oriel’s statue of Cecil Rhodes is removed and Magdalen college removing a portrait of the Queen.
Rees-Mogg told the House:
As for Magdalen college, it’s not exactly 1687, 1688, it’s a few pimply adolescents getting excited and taking down a picture of Her Majesty. It makes Magdalene look pretty wet but it’s not the end of the world. I wouldn’t get too excited about that though it does amuse me to speculate what would happen if one of her Her Majesty’s subjects suggested taking down the stars and stripes in an American university, it might not be enormously well-received and as I think the pimply adolescent in question was an American citizen, he might like to think about that. He might think that taking down the US flag in an American university was a bridge too far, even for the most patriotic Briton.
As regards the academics refusing to teach, I mean I am half tempted to say you should be lucky not to be taught by such a useless bunch but if they are that feeble, what are you missing? I mean what are they doing there? Why don’t they have any pride in their country, our marvellous history and its success? And Rhodes is not a black and white figure. Perhaps they’re not learned enough to have bothered to look up the history of Rhodes in any detail which has been written about quite extensively now and as I say: he is a figure of importance and of interest and of enormous generosity to Oxford. Do they want to give the money back to the descendants of Cecil Rhodes? Or are they intending to keep it to themselves? So we must not allow this wokeness to happen. The idea of changing Churchill college, well perhaps we should introduce a bill to rename Cambridge Churchill and call it Churchill university and that would be one in the eye for the lefties
Renaming Cambridge university? Only an Oxford graduate could ever propose such an idea.
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