Brexiteer. 18th Century throwback. Potential Tory leadership candidate. Jacob Rees-Mogg is many things.
But a bad sportsman he certainly is not - and he proved it by applauding a teenager who has beaten his record for the longest word ever spoken in the House of Commons.
The MP for North East Somerset used 29-letter floccinaucinihilipilification, defined as the action or habit of estimating something as worthless, to highlight alleged corruption among judges in the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg in 2012.
But 16-year-old Michael Bryan went one better, using 45-letter pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis at a Youth Select Committee meeting in the Commons on 14 July.
According to Oxford Dictionaries, this is “an invented long word said to mean a lung disease caused by inhaling very fine ash and sand dust”.
Rees-Mogg was quick to congratulate Bryan, posting on his now-famous Instagram account:
Unfortunately for Bryan, he won’t officially be the record-holder though, because his words will not be recorded in Hansard.
The BBC reported a House of Commons spokeswoman said that they would, however, be recorded on the British Youth Council’s website.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4′s Today programme, Rees-Mogg congratulated Bryan and labelled him “a hero of our times”.
“He’s achieved exactly what he intended to, that is to say he’s raised a poltiical issue about the different treatments of different diseases by using a longer word.”
The Tory MP vowed he will learned to pronounce the name of Welsh village Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch - to which Today presenter John Humphrys chimed in by pronouncing it and declaring it “straightforward”.
We look forward to hearing a no-doubt flawless pronunciation from Rees-Mogg in due course.