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20th Apr 2022

Anger as Jacob Rees-Mogg says ‘get perspective’ after Andrew Marr talks about father’s death in lockdown

Kieran Galpin

This comes a day after Johnson was slammed for his so-called apology

Jacob Rees-Mogg has insisted that people need to “get perspective” after Andrew Marr shared the heartbreaking tale of his father passing at the same time as the infamous Tory parties.

On LBC’s Tonight on Tuesday, mere hours after Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed his fixed penalty notice, the 62-year-old broadcasting veteran said: “I buried my father on the week that one of those parties took place and it was a party.”

He continued: “He was an elder of the Church of Scotland – that church was locked and barred. We had a small gathering, most of the family weren’t there. The other parishioners he would have loved to be there weren’t allowed to be there because we followed the rules.

“And I felt intensely angry about that – and I do not regard this as fluff.”

Brexit Minister Jacob Rees-Mogg ignored Marr’s new point, instead agreeing that closing churches was a “great mistake.”

“What is happening now two years on against what’s going on in Ukraine, what is going on with the cost of living crisis, one has to get a sense of perspective,” he added. “What is going on in Ukraine is fundamental to the security of the Western world. And you are comparing this to a fine issued for something that happened two years ago.”

Marr responded: “I’m really sorry but thinking about what happened to my family, and I only use that because it happened to so many others up and down the country … we find, I would say, that word fluff quite offensive.”

Reacting to the inflammatory statements, one Twitter user wrote: “No sympathy. No empathy. No compassion.”

“All the empathy of a block of concrete,” another echoed.

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