Jacob Rees-Mogg has been accused of trying to “deflect attention” and “trolling” after issuing a set of rules for staff in his office to follow, including a list of banned words and a requirement to use imperial measurements.
According to the style guide obtained by ITV News, the newly-appointed Leader of the House of Commons insists all non-titled males are given the suffix Esq and words including “ongoing” and “hopefully” are banned.
In a call for accuracy he tells staff: “CHECK your work.”
The guidance was drawn up by Rees-Mogg’s North East Somerset constituency team some years ago, but has now been shared with officials in his new office, the Press Association reports.
On Friday evening, many of the terms in the guide trended on Twitter as people debated the pros and cons of such controversial topics as the Oxford Comma.
But a number of commentators accused the Tory MP of trying to distract from more substantive issues.
Mail on Sunday columnist, Dan Hodges, said: “There was a time when the Tories had to throw a dead cat on the table to deflect attention. From now on all it will take is a Jacob Rees-Mogg punctuation guide.”
Campaigner Femi Oluwole, refused to share the article on social media, saying: “I was going to share the article, but that’s what they want. Play the posh funny buffoons so we don’t notice that they’re all truly terrible people.”
He then listed some of the issues he believes the new cabinet are attempting to deflect attention from.
Asked on his LBC show about the ban on certain words, Rees-Mogg said: “These are for my letters. This list was drawn up by my staff.
“And when you read through a letter you see something that says ‘it was very important’, but, probably not actually, it’s probably just important.
“‘Unacceptable’ is a dreadful, weasel word. Such an ugly word.It is used when people mean ‘wrong’ but they don’t have the courage to say so.
“The use of the words is to hide meaning rather than to elucidate meaning, and, therefore you should use words that elucidate meaning.”
Rees-Mogg said that he was no longer being paid to present the LBC phone-in programme because he had become a Government minister.