rees-mogg-memes

Screengrab via YouTube/BBC News

Jacob Rees-Mogg gets memed for lounging on government bench

A meme of the British politician also appeared on the side of a castle.

Photo of Siobhan Ball 

Siobhan Ball

Internet Culture

Posted on Sep 5, 2019   Updated on May 20, 2021, 4:43 am CDT

If you’ve been anywhere near British Twitter lately, you may have come across #JacobReesSmug and a picture of one of our politicians lying down across the front benches of parliament.

The Right Honourable Jacob Rees-Mogg, old Etonian and Oxford graduate, former hedge fund manager, and member of Boris Johnson’s self-styled anti-elitist Tory party spent the parliamentary debate over extending article 50, and thereby the date at which we would leave the EU, sprawled and seemingly half asleep across the bench. An advocate of No Deal Brexit, where the UK would leave the EU with no deal covering trade, borders or travel in place, this may have been an expression of his contempt over the idea of extending that deadline in order to negotiate a deal, or simple disinterest in the debate. Whatever the reason, people are lambasting him for the lack of respect shown to the commons, and the people who elected him. From deep political disgust, memes are born.

Jacob Rees-Mogg memes

A popular format of the Rees-Mogg meme takes his own words on the supposed idleness of those on benefits and applies them to the image. The meme below features the Rees-Mogg quote, “We cannot have people simply loafing about, doing nothing and expecting the state to finance their lifestyles.”

While this one says, “you’ve got to judge people, ultimately, by their actions,” superimposed over an illustration of him asleep on the bench.

Another popular take doesn’t feature the man himself, but rather the empty bench with anti-homelessness spikes photoshopped onto it, a reference both to this government’s punitive approach to poverty and the man’s hypocritical statement about laziness funded by the state.

https://twitter.com/Fofine/status/1169635951141937152

While Tommy Rotten is pulling no punches with his take on Mogg’s approach to the poor in this cartoon of him being delivered by Death to Victorian London.

https://twitter.com/Beardyknave/status/1169186546467123202

Then there are the ones designed just to make him look silly. See Mogg on a waterslide, with college party style graffiti on his face, and cuddling a book on Brexit for Dummies.

https://twitter.com/Wonderwol_/status/1169348747907739649

https://twitter.com/machinmayer/status/1169247374344118272

Plus a brilliant if uncanny animation referencing Monty Python’s ministry of silly walks.

Some are a bit lewd.

https://twitter.com/jezebeljayne/status/1169291927654666241

With a reference to Titanic thrown in.

https://twitter.com/JosephS92768516/status/1169291104602198017

https://twitter.com/Rachel__Ray/status/1169060333945794562

Classical art was popular for some reason.

https://twitter.com/BruceLauderdale/status/1169228802704236545?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1169228802704236545&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailydot.com%2Fwp-admin%2Fpost.php%3Fpost%3D631201%26action%3Dedit

https://twitter.com/marnanel/status/1169361228059369477

https://twitter.com/dunxxB/status/1169181174339645440

As was referencing his old-fashioned upperclass lifestyle.

https://twitter.com/Dossard49/status/1169280782453682178

Twitter user @marnanel helpfully created a Rees-Mogg template so other people can make their own memes.

https://twitter.com/marnanel/status/1169237639024795649

And in a rare occurrence of memes leaving the internet and breaking through into real life, this was projected onto the side of Edinburgh Castle last night (Scotland universally voted to remain in the EU and is still markedly unhappy about all of this).

The light show, which also included the slogans “they’re lying” and “no one voted for this,” was put on by campaign group Led By Donkeys, dedicated to exposing the hypocrisy and actual comments made about Brexit by various British politicians.

Though nothing’s going to top projecting it onto the side of a royal palace, there’s still plenty of Rees-Mogg memes over on Twitter that haven’t been featured here. So go check them out, you know, if you’re into that.

https://twitter.com/elisabeth_pinto/status/1169134213955825664

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*First Published: Sep 5, 2019, 2:25 pm CDT

Siobhan Ball

Siobhan Ball is a historian, archivist, and journalist. She also writes for Autostraddle and bi.org

Siobhan Ball