Everyone loves a bit of Jacob Rees-Mogg. It's a well-established fact.
Yesterday, speaking on a motion relating to the remuneration of EU staff, he gave us another reason to celebrate his entrance into the House of Commons. He used the word "floccinaucinihilipilification".
"I have great sympathy with what the hon. Gentleman says. We ought to start thinking about withholding money. I have long had doubts about how the EU works and the ratchet, but I had the idea that the judges—though they may have a political objective; though they may be in favour of a federal Europe; and though they may push the law to the most extreme point to make the case for a federal European state—would not break basic principles of natural justice. The principle is nemo iudex in causa sua—a famous principle judged on and upheld in this country for centuries, and not just in this country, but abrogated in the EU.
"I am glad to say, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the requirement not to be rude about judges applies only to judges in this country. It does not apply to judges in the EU, so let me be rude about them. Let me indulge in the floccinaucinihilipilification of EU judges and quote from the book of Amos about them:
'For I know your manifold transgressions and your mighty sins: they afflict the just, they take a bribe, and they turn aside the poor in the gate from their right.'
Those are the judges of the EU. Her Majesty’s Government are right to stand up to them. They do not deserve their money and it is iniquitous that they have allowed themselves to be judges in their own cause. It is a breach of justice; it ought to be criminal."
This speech has got everything we love about the Mogg - he spoke in Latin, he quoted from a little-read book of the Bible, and he used a fantastically polysyllabic word most of us haven't even dreamed about (apart from perhaps in spelling bee-themed nightmares).
Before you ask, "floccinaucinihilipilification" is a real word. According to an online dictionary, it means 'an act or instance of judging something to be worthless or trivial'.
All hail the Mogg for managing to inject a point of interest into an otherwise extremely dull bit of parliamentary business...
Comments
Jacky / February 22 2012 11:13am
.. I have the most terrible crush on this man.. he's simply delicious
Paul / May 03 2012 7:41am
He's the pin-up boy for inbreeding. His wife, however, comes from more interesting (though as badly bred) stock. Her bottom is very big.
Tom / November 08 2012 11:09pm
During my days as a pretentious arse at public school, I spoke like Rees-Mogg. I would use words like "floccinaucinihilipilification", "antidisestablishmentarianism" and even "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis" just because I knew them. I would back up my position in debates by citing random legal principles in the Latin form. And I laboured on under the delusion that I was being laughed at because I was better.
Then I grew up.
This man became a Tory MP instead.