Jacob Rees-Mogg has submitted a usually old school resignation letter, in a final hurrah for the so-called honourable member for the 18th century.
The North East Somerset MP wrote his letter, resigning as enterprise secretary, by hand and declined to share it on social media, in stark distinction with the typed resignation letters shared on Twitter by different MPs.
Rees-Mogg’s handwriting is so troublesome to decipher that the Scottish newspaper the Nationwide has headlined an article: “We guess you may’t learn Jacob Rees-Mogg’s handwritten resignation letter.”
In his characteristically anachronistic model, Rees-Mogg, a faithful Catholic, dated the letter “St Crispin’s Day”.
St Crispin’s Day is a feast day within the Christian calendar on 25 October, which takes its title from the saints Crispin and Crispinian, who have been tortured and beheaded by the Roman emperor in AD286.
Many vital battles have taken place on that day all through historical past, together with the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, immortalised in a St Crispin’s Day speech in Shakespeare’s Henry V.
Rees-Mogg begins his letter by wishing the brand new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, “each success” in his place.
“As you’ll rightly need your personal group I’d be grateful for those who might convey my resignation as secretary for enterprise, power and industrial technique to the King,” Rees-Mogg added.
In Britain’s parliamentary democracy, the monarch, now King Charles III, retains some prerogative powers, together with appointing or dismissing ministers and the prime minister.
Such energy is often exercised solely on the recommendation of ministers, and in actuality it’s the prime minister who hires and fires their cupboard group.
Nonetheless, Rees-Mogg is well-known for insistently sticking to his interpretation of the finer factors of the British structure.
He famously argued in August 2019 that the choice to advise the Queen to prorogue parliament, weeks earlier than a vote on the ultimate Brexit settlement, was “routine”. The then prime minister Boris Johnson’s recommendation was later declared illegal by a unanimous supreme court docket verdict.
