Annunziata Rees-Mogg, the sister of European Research Group (ERG) chief Jacob Rees-Mogg who was hailed as Nigel Farage’s “secret weapon” when he unveiled her as a Brexit Party candidate, says she has her brother’s support.
Annunziata told The Telegraph that she and her brother Jacob are “very close” and that he had “accepted my decision”.
“[Jacob] knows that I feel extremely passionately about this subject and that I felt I had to do something… Of course, he sees a different way of achieving the same aim, which is to enact the democratic will of 17.4 million people and make sure Brexit happens,” she said.
“There is no schism between us. It’s merely how one gets there,” she confirmed later.
“He’s got his way, I see my way, but we agree on the end result. I just hope between us we can ensure it happens.”
Like Jacob, Annunziata had been active in the Conservative Party from a very young age, saying she was a member by age five and out canvassing the party by the time she was eight.
“I didn’t think there would ever come a day where I would feel so let down by [the Conservative Party], of which I’ve been a member since I was five-years-old,” she told The Telegraph.
“But that day has come. Theresa May has abandoned her membership, just as she’s abandoned the electors in this country,” she lamented.
“She stood on a manifesto she has not delivered, and it is very clear at this stage she has no intention of delivering it. I felt I had to do something to make sure the people are listened to, and that democracy can survive.”
Annunziata Rees-Mogg has previously stood for the Conservative Party, coming close to winning a seat in Parliament in 2010.
Famously, she was said to have been pressured by then-leader David Cameron to shorten her name to “Nancy Mogg” while campaigning — part of his efforts to “de-toff” the once patrician dominated party, in spite of his own privileged background as a former pupil of Eton College boarding school and member of the exclusive Bullingdon Club at the University of Oxford.
Annunziata refused to go along with this public relations measure, however, and was subsequently booted from the party’s list of approved candidates by the party establishment while she was heavily pregnant, to the dismay of many ordinary members.
“The Brexit Party is fortunate to have such a high-calibre candidate,” Jacob Rees-Mogg said of her move.
“But I am sorry that Annunziata has left the Conservative Party.”
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