Jacob Rees-Mogg has defended a remark made by Tory colleague Kemi Badenoch where she attacked David Tennant and made reference to his skin colour.
Badenoch became embroiled in a row with the Doctor Who star in June after he told her to “shut up” on trans matters at the British LGBT Awards.
She hit back by branding him a “rich, lefty, white male celebrity so blinded by ideology he can’t see the optics of attacking the only black woman in government by calling publicly for my existence to end”.
“Do you think the phrase ‘white men’ should be used as a pejorative?’, Steve Edginton asked Jacob on GB News.
“What a bizarre thing to do, why should that be used as a pejorative?” Jacob responded, before being reminded of Badenoch’s tweet, which he then sought to defend.
“It’s not a pejorative, it’s a description”, he said.
“She’s using it as a comparison to herself,” he added, before adding “rich is a compliment when you’re a conservative.
“She was pointing out he was different. It doesn’t mean these things are bad.
“You need to ask her why she used these terms but she was not using it pejoratively. For a Conservative to criticise somebody for being rich would be bizarre. How are we going to fund public services.
“Kemi is not a commie.”
Jacob then made his disdain for Tennant clear as he laid into the popular actor.
“This dreadful little man who is, I believe, a comedian of some sort”, he said before being told that the 53-year-old is an actor.
“I think what he said about her was atrocious. He said she shouldn’t exist. That is beyond the fair remit of political criticism.
“She was absolutely entitled to be quite fierce in response to him. His behaviour is deeply shameful.
“If he were a conservative saying this about a socialist, he would be deplatformed. I’m not in favour of deplatforming, but like Mr Banks in Mary Poppins, he would have had his bowler hat punched through and his umbrella torn up for what he had to say.”
Badenoch has drawn ire from the trans community in the past with an instance in June seeing her pledge to change the Equality Act to rewrite the definition of sex.
The changes also would have allowed organisations to bar transgender women from single-sex spaces, including hospital wards and sports events.
Source Agencies
