Jacob Rees Mogg- please don't ban those words.

Jacob Rees Mogg - please- don't ban those words.

He may have been Prime Minister for almost a week but already Boris Johnson has hurtled slap bang into his first controversy as we always thought he might. Just as things were going so well in his maiden speech as PM, the other man with a plum in his mouth has, so to speak, stirred up a hornet's nest. But hold on, you can't say that because that's a well worn cliche and we can't have one of those in the House of Commons.

Yes folks. It's come to our attention that the esteemed member of North East Somerset and now the Leader of the House of Commons Jacob Rees Mogg has got rather hot under the collar about grammar and language. You see Mr Mogg's basic contention is that commas should be correctly situated in everyday sentences, imperial weights and measurements should be turned into a major political issue and everyday words should be banned, wiped clean from the English dictionary and never spoken of in both speech or the written word. Perhaps he'd like to ban cider from Somerset pubs into the bargain.

It should be pointed out that at this point in the proceedings that the lines of reality have now become totally blurred and instead we are now confronted with the thoughts of a man who believes  horse drawn carriages, the landau and the barouche should all be immediately restored to the streets of London. Mr Mogg, amusingly referred to as the member of Parliament for the 18th century, inhabits a world that for most of us is now so far distant in time that he may just as well be living in it.

The problem is that Mogg maintains his defiant and somewhat antediluvian stance. It would have been fine had he admitted to his crazy and peculiar beliefs but sadly Mogg is still stuck in some inexplicable time warp and he won't give an inch. Mogg lives in a world of faded grandeur, a world of palatial country houses where the aristocracy and the nobility met at the grandest parties, where champagne flowed until deep into the night.

Mogg belongs to that rarefied age when ladies danced with gentlemen wearing gloves and ladies flaunted glittering jewellery. Even the voice would suggest that the man has eaten too many hot potatoes. And this is where Mogg's withering contempt for everyday words begins to fall on stony ground. On the one hand there are the idiosyncratic, Hooray Henry utterances, the fawning support of his Cabinet colleague and Prime Minister Boris Johnson followed by some good, old fashioned poshness and sycophancy. So this is the face of British politics. Or is it?

We all know that Mr Mogg would rather be living in a world of politeness, elegance and snooty propriety but does he have to make it that obvious? Does he have to inflict us on the urgent necessity of putting full stops in the right place and never to use words such as 'very', 'got', 'disappointment', or 'unacceptable' and whatever other word he believes should be forbidden. In an age when not a great deal seems to make any sense Jacob Rees Mogg has just taken us back to the days when Horatio Nelson was a wee lad in shorts.

In his dark, very severe pin striped jacket and wearing those very distinctive pre-NHS glasses Mogg's demeanour remains unchanged. There is the rigid formality, the insistence on discipline at all levels of society and that stern conviction that all children should go to bed when their parents tell them to do so.

But oh please Mr Mogg where on earth did you find the time or energy to completely sanitise the English language, to make a heartless mockery of the language of Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy and William Shakespeare? Should we now to proceed to talk and communicate in a way that only Mogg understands?  Or have we now entered an era of studied uniformity where everything looks the same every day and the people in power have unchallengeable power? Or maybe Mr Mogg should set down his hard and fast rules now before the Thought Police arrive. Yes everybody it really does feel as if radical changes are just around the corner. Now leave that dictionary alone Jacob.