Jacob Rees-Mogg booed by protesters outside Tory conference
Jacob Rees-Mogg was pursued by angry protesters who jeered and booed, with some shouting ‘Tory scum’
Jacob Rees-Mogg was booed and heckled by furious protesters shouting “Tory scum” as he made his way to the Conservative party conference in Birmingham.
The business secretary was escorted by several police officers as he walked across Victoria Square, which is just around the corner from his party’s annual gathering at the nearby International Convention Centre.
Mr Rees-Mogg was pursued by angry protesters who jeered and booed, with some shouting “Tory scum” at him as officers stayed in close proximity to the MP for North East Somerset.
The gathered protesters are furious at Liz Truss’s economic plan and are carrying signs reading “unelected, unaccountable, unhinged” and “wages up, bills down, Tories out”.
Mick, who followed the minister with a placard that read “Tory lies kill”, said he joined the rally because “I hate the Tories”.
The 58-year-old, from Birmingham, who did not want to give his surname, described Ms Truss’s mini-budget as “disastrous for normal people”.
He said: “It’s just the start though - the next step is, to balance the books again, they’re going to cut public services even further. They disgust me.”
Other demonstrators also expressed their anger over the government’s move to axe the top rate of income tax for the nation’s highest earners during the cost-of-living crisis.
Jane Elledge, 53, an IT trainer from Bromsgrove, said: “Enough is enough really.
“We’ve had Brexit, we’ve had falling standards, we’ve had people having to work two jobs, people starving, people with no heating, and just the kind of final straw is the announcement of the richest people getting a tax cut.
“Trickle-down economics doesn’t work. We get nothing - nothing for the working people. It’s got to stop. Tories out.”
As speakers took to the stage, demonstrators chanted “Tories are not welcome here” and “Tory scum out of Brum”.
RMT general secretary Mick Lynch told the rally that “we are in the middle of a class struggle”.
“We pay tax to support our people not to subsidise the rich. The rich should be subsidising us,” he told protesters gathered in the city centre, where the Tory conference was getting under way.
“Ordinary men and women have got to understand we are in the middle of a class struggle now.”
He also said the last six months had shown “the decadence and corruption of the ruling class” and that the Government was “acting in the interests of their people”.
To loud cheers, he said: “We’re going to change this country, we’re going to change society.”
Organised by the People’s Assembly campaign group, it was part of a wave of protests sweeping the country amid rising energy costs and falling living standards.
Despite the police escort, Mr Rees-Mogg played down the protests as a “fact of democracy”.
Speaking to Sky News, he said: “There have been protests at Tory conferences since time immemorial, it’s nothing new.
“It’s a fact of democracy. They’re shouting but it’s perfectly peaceful.
And the right to peaceful expression of your view is fundamental to our constitution.”
Speaking ahead of the conference, Ms Truss said she is standing by her tax-cutting plan as she refused to rule out public spending cuts.
“I do want to say to people I understand their worries about what has happened this week,” she told the BBC’s Sunday With Laura Kuenssberg programme.
“I do stand by the package we announced and I stand by the fact we announced it quickly, because we had to act”.
Additional reporting by PA
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