BREXIT Opportunities Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg is reportedly considering entering the already packed Tory leadership race.
According to The Telegraph, the right-wing Eurosceptic is thinking of throwing his hat into the ring as the “continuity Boris” candidate.
Sources said that Rees-Mogg had spoken to a number of Tory MPs on Monday morning to ask if he should put his name forward.
One MP told the newspaper: “He would be brilliant and probably the only person all the pro-Boris [MPs] could support.”
Johnny Rotten, the former Sex Pistols singer, is among those who previously backed Rees-Mogg to become PM.
The rocker told TalkTV he loves his “put Britain first attitude”.
The Cabinet member said he was “honoured” by the endorsement.
But speaking to BBC Radio 4 on Monday, Tory MP Steve Baker warned Cabinet minister Rees-Mogg against standing in the Tory leadership contest, saying he would fail to win a General Election.
The campaign manager for Attorney General Suella Braverman told BBC Radio 4’s PM programme: “There’s a danger of fragmentation.
“Kemi Badenoch has decided to stand, I’m afraid as much fond as I am of Kemi, it’s a bit improbable.
“She hasn’t been in the Cabinet; Suella has been in the Cabinet and without Cabinet experience it’s difficult to see that somebody – while we’re in power – should become prime minister.
“There is a grave danger of fragmentation, Priti [Patel] is standing, Jacob is apparently standing.
“We’ll see whether he actually does. I love Jacob like a brother but he wouldn’t win a General Election, I’m quite sure, so I hope to dissuade him, amongst others. It’s a nonsense to have candidates standing all over the place.”
Rees-Mogg has been loyal to Johnson throughout his leadership, and has been rewarded with a handful of Cabinet positions in return.
Even as Johnson's Cabinet fell apart around him, with a chancellor, health secretary and a number of ministers gone, Rees-Mogg was defending his leadership.
He played down the scale of the crisis within the party, suggesting that “losing chancellors is something that happens”.
Offering a broad sweep of British political history, with references to the fortunes of former prime ministers Lord Salisbury and Harold Macmillan, he wrongly predicted that it was not fatal for a Prime Minister to lose a chancellor.
He said that it is the Prime Minister who appoints Cabinet ministers and is “not someone who is brought down by Cabinet ministers”.
Rees-Mogg also said that the Prime Minister had made a “minor mistake” over the Pincher controversy.
