JACOB Rees-Mogg has come under fire after ignoring the coronavirus travel restrictions brought in by his own government in order to attend church.
The Leader of the House of Commons, who lives in a seventeenth century manor house in the parish of West Harptree, visited St Mary’s Church in Glastonbury on Sunday.
The journey would take around 30 minutes and cover approximately 17 miles. It would also involve crossing from English Tier 3 restrictions to Tier 4, against government guidance.
Father Bede Rowe, of St Mary's church, confirmed to The Mirror that Jacob Rees-Mogg attended the afternoon Latin mass there on Sunday.
One local resident told that paper he had seen Rees-Mogg at the service in the past, but the Tory MP did not visit every week.
“Does the Leader of the House of Commons really need to cross tiers to go to a Latin mass?” he asked.
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“I don’t know why he would have chosen to be there on Sunday, I don’t know why he considered it important enough to completely ignore all the guidance his own people are putting out there.
“Recently we had a lot of revellers in town during the Winter Solstice and they raised a lot of eyebrows and got a lot of hostility because they were ignoring the regulations and the bottom line is people are responding the same to him on this as they did with them.”
Writer Liz Williams told The Mirror that locals were “very cross” at Rees-Mogg, although it was “not as egregious as what Dominic Cummings did, he is still crossing from tier 3 to tier 4 just to go to mass, which we are told not to do”.
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“It just seems yet again like there is one rule for us and one rule for the rest of them,” she added, saying people are “fed up of this hypocritical approach from the people that are setting these rules”.
Rees-Mogg has often spoken publicly about his Catholic faith, tweeting on Christmas day 2020: “Today a Saviour has been born to us. He is Christ the Lord.”
However, he has been criticised for not reflecting those views in his policies, with Guardian columnist Michele Hanson saying he didn’t appear to have “quite got the hang of what Jesus was aiming for”.
A spokesperson for Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “The Leader of the House regularly attends the only old rite mass available in the Clifton diocese which meets his religious obligations.”
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