Jacob Rees-Mogg described Nigel Farage as “essentially a Conservative” as he prepared to launch the Popular Conservatism movement today alongside former Prime Minister Liz Truss.
Rees-Mogg told GB News: “I’m absolutely delighted that Nigel is coming and reporting on the event for GB News. It would be I suppose a little bit odd for me to report on my own speech, though no doubt I'll be discussing it later on today on my own programme.
“Nigel is a very welcome visitor to the Popular Conservatism event, but he's also someone with whom many Conservatives agree on most of the big issues, that Nigel is essentially a Conservative in most of his views.”
In a discussion during Breakfast with Eamonn Holmes and Isabel Webster, he said: “This isn't a faction. This is really about ideas and about Conservative ideas.
“It's not about a faction of Members of Parliament or a grouping within parliament. You've got to mention the One Nation group within the House of Commons.
“They've always been dining clubs and interest groups and friends who get together and meet and chat about things, but this is essentially a policy forum to discuss the ideas of conservatism.”
He added: “This is about what people want and it's about people having the chance to lead their own lives, to be in charge of their own success, and to ensure that the country is governed to improve people's standard of living, and it's not delegated to bodies like the World Health Organisation, which we hear so much about, or the European Court of Human Rights, or to the endless quangos that interfere in our lives.
“That's the thing about Popular Conservatism. It's about reinvigorating the popular element of democracy that I think, as Margaret Thatcher, once said, is fundamentally Conservative. What she said was that the facts of life turn out to be Conservative...
“Thatcherism was popular conservatism in the 1980s and enormously successful, it transformed the economy and made the country much more prosperous than it had been before.
“So, to that extent, this is replicating the approach to popular conservatism that Margaret Thatcher had.”
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