On February 2, 2018, seven members of a group called Bristol Antifascists assembled outside a lecture hall at the University of the West of England in Bristol. They donned balaclavas or dark glasses, according to taste, and entered through the double doors at the back of the hall. “No platform for homophobes!” they shouted. “No platform for sexists!” While the audience looked embarrassed or got out their phones, the target of these insults strode up the steps of the lecture hall to greet the intruders. Jacob Rees-Mogg looked, as he often does, like a man trying to be reasonable in the middle of a maelstrom. As the protesters jabbed their fingers at him and continued to shout, the Member of Parliament for North East Somerset listened politely, his six-foot-two frame leaning gently toward them, and made his own suggestions—sadly inaudible on the video of the event. After a brief exchange, most of the “Antifascists” gave up and retreated through the double doors. But one carried on yelling, until another audience member approached and threw an unsuccessful punch. Whereupon Rees-Mogg jumped between them and, for once, raised his voice. “Ladies and gentlemen!” he cried out to the room, which by now was on its feet. “Please calm down!”

Asked by a reporter afterward whether he had felt in danger, Rees-Mogg smiled and shook his head. “They’re British,” he explained. “They disapprove of everything I stand for, but they’re good, honest British citizens. They weren’t going to hit me.” It was a typical statement, almost ludicrous in its politeness. But Rees-Mogg has always seemed immune to ridicule: With his period-­drama vowels, his old-fashioned spectacles and haircut, and what one interviewer called his “faultless ancien régime courtesy,” he represents a species of upper-class Englishman previously rumored to be extinct. He also happens to be the best-known Catholic in British public life, and his career exemplifies the successes and failures of Christian witness in contemporary British politics.