Jacob Rees-Mogg is now the number-one choice of Tory party members to be their next leader
JACOB Rees-Mogg has topped a survey of Tory party members of who they want to replace Theresa May.
The eccentric Tory has enjoyed a meteoric rise in popularity this summer as he overtakes David Davis and Boris Johnson as grassroots activists’ number-one choice be their next leader.
It comes a day after the Old Etonian denied reports he was about to be offered a ministerial position “to test his suitability for higher office”.
Mr Rees-Mogg said: “This isn’t going to happen. I’m very happy serving the people of North East Somerset.
Speaking to the BBC he said: “I think to start putting oneself forward is a great mistake. Heaven knows next you’ll be offering me the papacy.”
But this morning he appeared top of a list of potential candidates to become leader after Mrs May with 22.5 per cent of the responses.
David Davis was on 15 per cent, while Boris Johnson and the Minister of State for Courts and Justice Dominic Raab were both on 7.5 per cent.
However “other”, the write-in category, came second in the survey - having topped it during the two previous months in the regular Conservative Home survey.
Paul Goodman, the site’s editor, said: “In our view, Jacob Rees-Mogg is the beneficiary of party member disillusion with the present senior options for replacing her.”
But he said Mr Rees-Mogg would be unlikely to boost the party’s chances of regaining its House of Commons majority.
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He wrote: “For all his intelligence, wit and fearlessness, this site suspects that Rees-Mogg as leader would be unable to overleap the legend of the nanny and the poshness and the supposed out-of-touchness, and cut through in the marginal seats, especially in the Midlands and the North, that the Tories need to win their first full majority since 1987.
“So in the absence of anyone that party members find convincing, Rees-Mogg is a gainer from what is essentially a protest vote.”
Yesterday the father of six appeared on the BBC to try and dampen the speculation he harbours ambitions to be in Downing Street.
His case wasn’t helped however by the producers filming his interview on the Daily Politics in front of a fake backdrop outside Number 10.
Asked if he was surprised to have been linked with the leadership Mr Rees-Mogg replied: “I’m as astonished as you are.
“It’s all jolly August stuff, and now we’re in September, I imagine it will calm down.”