Jacob Rees-Mogg’s descent is complete. No longer merely the punchline but the entire joke

His basic dignity, like that of Boris Johnson, David Davis, Steve Baker and so many more before him, is just the latest sacrifice upon the altar of Brexit

Last week Jacob Rees-Mogg summoned the Westminster media to the grand St Stephen’s Entrance of the Houses of Parliament to announce, entirely needlessly, that he, Jacob Rees-Mogg, had formally sent in his letter of no confidence in the prime minister.

To his right stood Steve Baker, the self-appointed unofficial whip of the Tory rebels. On their way out to face the cameras, Baker had paused, exhaled, and was overheard muttering self-motivational maxims to himself.

Do not be in any doubt. This was meant to be the great, historic moment that Jacob Rees-Mogg, leader of the European Research Group, set in motion a chain of letter writing that would topple the prime minister.

And now that he has so singularly failed to achieve his aim, and both men have so humiliated themselves and their party in the process, Jacob Rees-Mogg doesn’t want to talk about it.

On Tuesday morning, the press were summoned again, this time to the launch of the European Research Group’s latest bit of “research”, on why leaving the customs union and single market would be absolutely fine (the document is beyond risible, but we’ll come to that later).

Unsurprisingly, one or two members of the media wished to know what happens next after Mr Rees-Mogg’s attempted coup.

“It’s not a coup,” he said. “It’s not a coup,” pointing out, not for the first time, that his attempts to remove the prime minister at a time of acute national crisis were in accordance with the “democratic procedures of the Conservative Party”. And, more to the point, he added: “This type of language, this over-egged language, is rather damaging to political debate.”

At this point, on the subject of “over-egged language”, it does not seem inappropriate to refer back to Mr Rees-Mogg’s comments of last week, in which he said of Theresa May’s Brexit agreement that it would turn Britain “into not so much a vassal state as a slave state”.

Never mind that the only really accepted usage of the term “slave state” is a US state that maintained the legality of slavery in the years preceding the American Civil War; there’s also the fact that Norway, a country that struggles on under conditions all but identical to the ones Rees-Mogg describes as slavehood, recently topped an international poll on countries with the highest quality of life.

And as we are at such risk of over-egged political language damaging debate, perhaps it’s worth at this juncture referring back to Mr Rees-Mogg’s words at the most recent ERG briefing before this one?

“What is the best way to achieve a deal? Is it to be snivelling and fearful and timorous and give the impression to the EU that we will do whatever they say?” he said then. “That we will kowtow, we will go down on bended knee, we will offer to serve homage to the great power that is in the European Union?”

How many eggs would we say are served in that exactly? It’s also worth pointing out that, while it is technically true he is only following the “procedures” of the Conservative Party, he knows he is utterly abusing the spirit of them. The whole point of the now widely ridiculed system of privately sending a letter of no confidence to the chairman of an obscure backbench committee, and said chairman keeping tally of how many he has, is that it allows the Conservative Party to move to elect a new leader in a discreet and dignified way.

It is a secretive process because it is meant to remain a secret. They are procedures that are not meant to be reimagined as a rolling circus for the 24-hour media age. The moment you summon the television cameras to announce you have sent your letter in, for no great reason beyond your own crushing vanity, is the moment you stop following the spirit of those procedures.

All of which explains why, two questions later, Mr Rees-Mogg refused to take questions on the subject entirely, and restricted questions “only to the report”.

Press conferences, it’s worth remembering, are not called by the press. They are called by people who want the press’s attention. Conventionally, whoever has called them is not, in such circumstances, meant to then tell the press what they can and can’t ask about. You have summoned them there after all.

Some years ago, I recall David Cameron standing behind a lectern in 10 Downing Street, next to the International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge, who was in town for the final inspections before the London games. As Rogge looked on utterly bemused, Cameron took six questions in a row on when he had last eaten a Cornish pasty. He knows it comes with the territory.

The only other occasion before this one when I can recall a mainstream British politician telling the media what they can and can’t ask about was when Jeremy Corbyn gave a speech on the NHS and refused to answer any questions on whether or not he had or hadn’t actually been offered a seat on a supposedly “ram-packed” Virgin train.

Mr Rees-Mogg became a media darling some years ago not merely because of his eccentricity and obvious telegenic demeanour. It was because he never, ever, dodged a question and gave a full, eminently quotable answer to anything he was asked. That he has descended to the level of Jeremy Corbyn in his least articulate days (he is since much improved) should surprise no one.

His basic dignity, like that of Boris Johnson, David Davis, Steve Baker and so many more before him, is just the latest sacrifice upon the altar of Brexit.

As for the “report” itself, well, it seeks to make clear, yet again, that some kind of Canada-plus style deal is preferable, while leaving the EU with no deal is no problem. The hard border with Ireland that both these options necessitate can all be worked out later, using technology that is yet to be invented. And the other problem, that the EU would reject out of hand any deal that threatens a return to a hard border, can also apparently be wished away for now.

More to the point, the only reason Mr Rees-Mogg has risen to any kind of prominence in this hour of national crisis is because the parliamentary arithmetic is such that his band of merry wreckers have the power to derail anything Theresa May has to offer.

“We do not want to change the leader, we want to change the policy,” they have said, several times, before changing their mind. Should they achieve their objective, how they then pass their “deal”, which is significantly less popular in the House of Commons than Theresa May’s one, is a problem a new leader categorically does not solve, and thus is also a problem for another day.

Perhaps this is why Mr Rees-Mogg is so unkeen on the word “coup”. It may not, strictly, be an abuse of Conservative procedure, but it might just be the least conservative moment in the Conservative Party’s history.

The idea of a Conservative, by the way, comes first from the writings of Edmund Burke, who in 1789, had this to say on the behaviour of the revolutionaries in France:

“We are taught to look with horror on those children of their country, who are prompt rashly to hack their aged parent in pieces, and put him into the kettle of magicians, in hopes that by their poisonous weeds, and wild incantations, they may regenerate the paternal constitution, and renovate their father’s life.”

Conservatives do not take wild actions with no concern for the consequences. Rees-Mogg’s revolution is failing, though it is certainly being televised. Thus far, it makes Bush and Blair’s adventures in Iraq seem a paragon of statecraft.