Having seen his fledgling celebrity career go down the tubes following his short-lived fly-on-the-wall TV show Meet the Rees-Moggs, in which the 57-year-old’s nanny took a starring role, Sir Jacob looks to be dipping his toe back into the world of politics.
The old Etonian, who lost his North Somerset parliamentary seat at the 2024 general election, has quietly set up a new British-American think tank, 878 Research, which was incorporated without much fanfare at Companies House in March.
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The venture has been co-founded with Radomir Tylecote, research director of the shadowy right wing Prosperity (formerly Legatum) Institute and Rees-Mogg’s special advisor during his short and inglorious period as Boris Johnson’s farcically titled minister for Brexit opportunities. According to its website, 878 will “focus on the existential threats to Britain, to America, and to our shared Judeo-Christian civilisation”.
It says: “Future leaders in Britain and America will need to appreciate the deepest roots of our political life and our freedoms. Working with scholars in Israel and other closely allied nations, we are rejuvenating knowledge of the origins of our constitutional tradition.” Perhaps unsurprisingly, this appears to largely mean “ending mass-immigration and deporting illegal immigrants”.
While registered in the UK, 878 apparently plans to also set up as a non-for-profit in Delaware USA. Its name, you won’t need telling, refers to the Battle of Edington, fought in May 878 between the West Saxon army of King Alfred the Great and the Danish Great Heathen Army – a conflict they talk of all the time in Wilimgton, Dover and other Delaware cities.
Since leaving parliament, Rees-Mogg has presented his own show on GB News, as well as returning earlier this month as a director of The American Trading Company, a dormant real estate management company. He is also a director at property firm Saliston, through which he holds property riches in Somerset and Pall Mall in London.
His hedge fund Somerset Capital Management, which Rees-Mogg has said scaled up to $10 billion under his management, is no more, having been put into voluntary liquidation in 2024. Its estimated surplus after paying debts is a modest £4.4 million, according to a declaration of solvency filed at Companies House.
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