Being Jacob Rees-Mogg is a full-time occupation

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The thing about really posh people is that they make it look effortless. Think of Prince William or David Cameron.

True, Cameron's inner Flashman could soon appear if he was thwarted, but Prince William probably does not even think of himself in this way. It just comes naturally to him.

At the other end of the spectrum are those for whom being posh is hard work. They make everything a little bit too obvious.

Take Boris Johnson. He was plucked from the same North London primary school the Miliband brothers attended and sent to prep school and then Eton. 

You feel that he has been trying a little too hard to fit in ever since.

It was good to have an allusion to Shakespeare when he announced he would not be a candidate for the leadership. The pause and self-satisfied smile while he waited for everyone to notice were less admirable.

The point of this post is to suggest that Jacob Rees-Mogg is a Johnson and not a Cameron.

From taking his nanny canvassing to turning up at a conference fringe meeting with a framed photograph of Margaret Thatcher, he has made it obvious that he is desperate for his aristocratic eccentricity to be noticed.

In fact, being Jacob Rees-Mogg is a full-time occupation.

All this reminds me of a story from the days when Princess Michael of Kent - "Princess Pushy" - was a fixture in the columns of the tabloids.

The Queen, so the story goes, was reading a list of all the Princess's titles.

"Oh dear," she said, "she sounds much too grand for us."

Rees-Mogg is Princess Pushy and not the Queen, you might say.