North East Somerset MP’s rightwing views and vigorous defence of Brexit are at heart of his appeal to traditional party members

It has been a tale of two conferences: while Conservative ministers speak to a half-empty auditorium, the party’s activists queue down stairwells and squeeze into hotel rooms to catch a glimpse of just one backbencher.

Jacob Rees-Mogg may once have been named the “the MP for the 20th century”, but on Monday 600 people filled Manchester town hall’s Great Hall, the venue used to the announce the result of the EU referendum, to hear him speak about what the UK should do next.

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The following day, people queued for up to an hour and a half to see him at one panel event. Afterwards the MP for North East Somerset was mobbed for selfies and cheerfully posed for photographs dressed in his trademark double-breasted suit.

Rees-Mogg’s theme was to push the case for a hard Brexit, an argument greeted with cheers and encouragement from activists. Many urged him to run for the party leadership, building on what was called “Moggmentum” in newspapers over the summer.

While some at the conference likened the rightwing MP’s sudden soaring popularity to the early days of grassroots support for the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, others in the party see Rees-Mogg’s mounting fanbase as a symptom of a wider need for reform to reinvigorate disillusioned activists.

The average age of the party is reportedly 71, and membership is falling fast. Though the current figure is not public, some activists calling for reform told fringe meetings they believed it to be about 100,000 – six times smaller than that of Labour.



There is no doubt Rees-Mogg is the most popular fringe figure. Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Conservatives’ leader, also draws crowds to her events, but there are far fewer from the party’s progressive wing at this conference.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jacob Rees-Mogg signs a poster that reads ‘Down with state control’ at the Tory conference. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

One Tory MP quipped that the party faithful were looking for a “Moses figure” to lead them out of a wilderness they had yet to enter, given the party was still in government.

Though described by colleagues and Labour opponents as charming and exceptionally polite, Rees-Mogg is an uncompromising social conservative. He openly opposes abortion, even after rape, has voted against equal marriage and called for the scrapping of the foreign aid budget.

His rightwing views and vigorous defence of Brexit are at the heart of his appeal to traditional Tory members, arguing that the UK legally owes no money to the EU by way of divorce payments and that any role for the European court of justice after 2019 would be a betrayal of the referendum result.

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At one fringe meeting, Rees-Mogg described the current party conference set-up as “Kim Jong-un style”, with no room for debate or dissent. The MP said the Conservatives treated activists “appallingly”, which drew cries of “hear, hear”. “They come up with brilliant ideas. We used to have a system that took the policy ideas from our members seriously,” he added.

“You are the most important person in this organisation,” he said to the assembled activists. “We are not some priestly caste, we are just the same members of the Conservative party and members of the associations. They are my selectorate, without them I am not a member of parliament. The membership is what counts.”

Rees-Mogg called for “more optimism, more positivity” in order to create a movement. “We need to put into practice what we believe on a national scale to a local scale, more power to members,” he said, when asked whether the party should emulate Momentum, the grassroots Labour campaigning movement. “‘Momentum of the right’ is there if only we ask for it.”

On one day of the conference, in a sign of the backbencher’s growing popularity among the grassroots, Conservative activists held a mock election for party chairman, which was won by Rees-Mogg.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jacob Rees-Mogg poses for a selfie with a supporter outside the Manchester Central Convention Centre on the third day of the conference. Photograph: AFP/Getty

Activists expressed their frustration over the party’s election performance and controlling top-down approach at a separate fringe event hosted by Eric Pickles and Graham Brady, who conducted a review of the 8 June poll disaster.

John Strafford, the founder of Campaign for Conservative Democracy, which wants more power for ordinary party members, told the fringe: “Every party chairman since then has seen a decline in membership and done nothing about it. It is an utter disgrace. I’ve heard over the years how important the members are to the party, but time and again they are kicked in the teeth by the hierarchy.”

Pickles hit back at Strafford, accusing him of chasing headlines and being “annoying”, before suggesting that members should take the initiative to improve things and recruit people. However, many in the room appeared to remain unconvinced that the party was listening.

Chris Howell, a delegate from Cambridge, suggested the Tories should look at the power that Momentum had given to Labour members. “Why would anybody – in particular a normal person – want to become a member of the Conservative party?” he said.

“We haven’t had a say in the party leader and we had a manifesto with little or no input from anybody that had some really damaging policies in it.”

Though many of the party’s MPs may not be prepared to begin making such radical reforms – particularly those who saw how many Labour’s MPs struggled to cope with a huge influx of new members from the left – there are several making the same case as Rees-Mogg: that the party must do more for its activists.

Speaking at a Demos fringe event, Robert Halfon, a former education minister, said the party needed to “radically, radically change our membership system” to recruit activists.

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“I don’t know if you watch Game of Thrones, but the White Walkers are coming,” he said. “Labour are campaigning in a way we are not. They have the membership, the infrastructure, which we do not have.”



Halfon, who has championed the idea of transforming the Conservatives into the “workers’ party”, said the Tories’ membership system could offer perks, such as a fuel card or travel discounts.

Fundamentally, though, it was the chance to make a difference that people wanted, he said. “In the Labour party, they have so much participation and involvement that members genuinely can vote for,” he said.

Halfon said he backed the idea of an elected party board and democratic Conservative policy forum. “It is nothing to be afraid of … it’s an honest and open debate,” he said.

Another MP who told activists he was looking for answers was George Freeman, the chair of the policy forum. He said he had been unaware of what was in the 2017 manifesto, despite chairing the body. “People have forgotten this used to be a very democratic party. Harold Macmillan’s housing reforms were done with a vote in the hall,” he said.

Freeman’s forum is launching an initiative this week to create “young champions” for policy areas to open up debate with non-members about issues they care about.

“How can we be a party which talks about trusting people and citizenship and the renaissance of responsibility if we don’t practice it in our own party? We have to walk the walk,” he said.