Ian Bone is a veteran anarchist, apparently. Here’s the thing, how can you be a veteran anarchist? People normally start that way out and end up somewhere else, hopefully with curtains and a place to put your feet up.
To be honest, I’d never heard of the man until just now. But I resent the way he’s made me feel sorry for Jacob Rees-Mogg (or Rees-Moog, as he is known round here; see wandering rants passim).
I don’t want to feel sorry for Jacob Ress-Mogg-or-Moog. The man drives me onto the rocks of a rotten mood every time he appears on the television or the radio, droning on about Brexit in that faux-reasonable way he has, like a thug with impeccable manners and a big house or two.
It was outside one of those houses, the one in London, that Bone stood with his pals from Class War. As the right-wing MP and Walter the Softy impersonator and his wife attempted to usher two of their brood inside the house, Bone shouted to the children: “Your daddy is a horrible person.”
He then said: “Lots of people don’t like your Daddy, do you know that? He probably hasn’t told you that. Lots of people hate him.”
Bone also included the family’s nanny, Veronica Crook, in his rant, when she arrived with two more of the couple’s many children, including baby son Sixtus. “Daddy doesn’t pay her very much,” he shouted. “Poor Nanny Crook who looks after you and wipes you bottom, doesn’t get enough money every week. But Daddy doesn’t care.”
There was more, but that is quite enough of Ian Bone and his tiresome tirade.
This incident set the editor of the Daily Express on a rant of his own under the headline: “HOW HAS OUR COUNTRY COME TO THIS?”
Over in the Guardian, the report says: “Sources close to the family played down the incident, suggesting the children had thought it was amusing.”
MPs from all sides came out in support of Jacob Rees-Mogg. The Labour MP Ian Lavery tweeted: “Rang Mr Rees – Mogg tonight. In terms of upbringing & politics we’re polar opposites not sure if he ever worked at the pit! but NO politicians families should ever be targeted under ANY circumstances. Politics aside this abhorrent behaviour is never ok.”
That seems fair enough, more on the button that the hand-wringing Express. Can one small incident sum up the state of the nation and all that? No, but perhaps Brexit can, and Rees-Mogg is a one-note Brexit bore trying to bully his party towards a hard, uncompromising break with the EU.
That’s why we should carry on disliking the man. For leading the so-called European Research Group (ERG), a potty pro-Brexit propaganda rabble that pretends to be something loftier.
This week, Rees-Mogg and his gang have been insisting that Britain will be a trillion pounds better off in 15 years for crashing out of the EU (didn’t Rees-Mogg earlier say that it might take 50 years to feel the benefit? Yup and double yup).
They’ve also solved the insoluble problem of the Northern Ireland border with a bit of blather about new technology and data sharing.
All that and innumerable glib assurances that everything will be sunshine and rainbows once we leave Europe.
That’s why I am annoyed with Ian Bone. I want to go on disliking Jacob Rees-Mogg-or-Moog for the very good reason that he is an impeccably polite menace to society. I want to carry on swearing at the news whenever he appears. I want to grumble: “Why do they give that ******* man so much airtime on the BBC?”
I want to do all that. But now an ageing anarchist has made me feel sorry for the dreadful man by shouting at his children. MPs’ children should always be out of bounds. Just shout at the daddy instead.