JACOB Rees-Mogg stunned Question Time viewers by dismissing a businessman's concerns about how leaving the EU has negatively affected the wine-selling industry.
The former Brexit Opportunities Minister was on the panel in Winchester, where one audience member’s question challenged the MP to explain the benefits of quitting the bloc.
When Graham, a life-long Tory voter, told the Conservative MP of the challenges many firms have faced thanks to Brexit red-tape, Rees-Mogg suggested the man was wrong.
Graham told the panel: “I’ve spent the last 30 years as a director in the wine industry, where I experienced first-hand just how terrible things have become post-Brexit.
“I find it incredibly disappointing as a life-long Conservative voter to hear Jacob saying all this stuff.”
Host Fiona Bruce asked the audience member to explain exactly how Brexit has impacted on his work.
“Just from a bureaucracy point of view, the paperwork … I’ve imported and exported wine for 30 years for leading wine companies. We just see delays, we see paperwork problems, everything has become so much more complicated.”
Graham added that Boris Johnson’s “oven-ready” Brexit deal was “about as oven-ready as a frozen turkey taken out five minutes before Christmas Day”.
He called on politicians to be honest about the impact of leaving the EU, which he described as “one of the most fundamental problems we’ve got”.
Graham went on: “There’s a fundamental breakdown in the truth when politicians are dealing with the electorate, it worries me so much … I look at the fact that people can tell untruths time and time again and then they’re just forgotten.”
Bruce asked Rees-Mogg to respond to the audience member’s concerns – but the MP failed to address Graham’s fears over truth in politics.
Despite Graham’s experience with selling wine for decades, the former minister told him: “On wine, we have deregulated the import of wine from Australia and New Zealand – so we’re making it easier for other countries to export to the UK.”
This wasn’t enough for Graham, who shouted back: “It’s completely not true.”
As he went into more detail on the problems in the industry, Rees-Mogg denied it was linked to Brexit.
“That’s a tax issue,” he said. “That’s something that the Chancellor decided to do. The import of wine from Australia and New Zealand has been made more simple,” he repeated.
Online, viewers were stunned by Rees-Mogg’s denial of the businessman’s experience as the clip was watched hundreds of thousands of times.
One pub owner wrote: “Tricky one this, who to believe? Man who has been importing wine for his job for 30 years & says Brexit has made his business ridiculously difficult, or Jacob Rees Mogg who insists that in actual fact importing wine is now much easier under Brexit.”
Former Labour MP Neil Coyle argued that Rees-Mogg looked “hugely arrogant and dismissive” responding to Graham.
“JRM lying when he’s already been called out for lying. Lower than a snake’s belly,” added one viewer.
Labour activist Liz Martin added: “This is a great example of Tory gaslighting… trying to tell people their lived experience isn’t true.”
