Caroline Lucas just expertly exposed Jacob Rees-Mogg’s shameful hypocrisy over tuition fee debt [Video]

I’d hazard a bet that virtually everybody in the country knows who Jacob Rees-Mogg is.

You may not particularly remember the face, or even recall his luxuriant double-barrelled name, but nobody could possibly forget his extraordinarily stereotypical uber-posh Tory persona.

If you were to ask people to name 10 stereotypical traits of your archetypal upper-class country gentleman, Jacob Rees-Mogg would almost certainly possess every single one.

Fresh from fathering his sixth, and arguably most ridiculously named child – Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher Rees-Mogg – the Tory MP took to the Question Time panel last night.

The beginning of the show saw Rees-Mogg attempt to defend his party’s stance on austerity in his usual laid-back and slightly patronising manner; bemoaning the debt that the Tories inherited in 2010 – a debt which his party has subsequently managed to more than double in just 7 years at the helm.

However, towards the end of in the show, the Tory MP for North East Somerset then also defended the Tories support for £9,000 tuition fees – a policy that burdens youngsters who attend university with around £50,000 worth of debt after they graduate.

In one breath Jacob Rees-Mogg was absolutely scathing of government debt and how burdensome it was to the public purse, and in another he was lauding the fact that his parties’ policies were burdening tens of thousands of students with huge sums of personal debt for the outrageous cheek of wanting a higher education.

The level of outright hypocrisy was stunning – and it was soon to be exposed for everyone to see.

With her final contribution of the programme, Green Party co-leader Caroline Lucas launched into an absolutely forensic deconstruction of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s outrageously glib stances on government debt as opposed to student debt, saying:

So I just thought it was interesting how Jacob spent the first half of the programme saying that government debt is really bad, and we need to avoid it at all costs, and he just spent the last ten minutes saying that student debt is absolutely fine, and don’t worry about it at all.

 

And later on in her statement, Lucas made another fantastic point that completely obliterated any rational logic in Rees-Mogg’s shamefully duplicitous argument:

And in terms of what are the alternatives, well let me just tell you that universities in France in Germany, in Austria, Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, all charge massively less – it’s about £2000 a year. We are paying in England the highest student fees in the whole world.

You can watch for yourself here:

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENw98KDzYfc[/embedyt]

Social media was quick to point out just how effective Lucas’ point had been:

Rees-Mogg spends 1st half of #bbcqt on national debt & the 2nd half on defending student debt. Best point of the night from @CarolineLucas

— james archie (@jamesarchie98) July 6, 2017

Caroline Lucas delivers the lead ultimate slapdown to Jacob Rees-Moggy-Cat.. Building up debt fine so long as it doesn't impact on ME #BBCQT

— Mark Vernon (@MVernon_21) July 6, 2017

Up until this late point, the Conservative MP had been having a much easier ride from the strangely pro-austerity audience than most Tories have been on the show of late.

However, Lucas’ devastating final attack may well have put a dampener on the evening for the Tory MP who is currently the subject of a Tory leadership social media frenzy, hilariously nicknamed ‘Moggmentum”.

Become An Evolve Politics Subscriber

Your subscriptions go directly into paying our writers a standard fee for every article they produce. So if you want to help us stay truly independent, please think about subscribing. We literally couldn’t function without the support of our fantastic readers.

Or a One-Off Donation to Evolve Politics

If you don’t want to subscribe, but still want to contribute to our project, you can make a one-off donation via the donate button below. All your donations go directly to our writers for their work in exposing injustice, inequality and unfairness.