Skip the oily Easter message, Jacob – it’s just a lesson in hypocrisy

Photo by Rod Long on Unsplash

Dear Mr Rees-Mogg,

Each Easter Sunday you post on social media a rather oleaginous celebration of the risen Christ. I would like to ask you not to post one this Easter Sunday. Like many who have observed your career, your statements, your actions and your manner, I think it hypocritical of you to make such public shows of piety. In fact, I think they make you look ridiculous, and if that doesn’t bother you then it should do.

Please consider:

You asked the Queen illegally to prorogue our sovereign Parliament. You are on record as demanding that other MPs ignore their consciences while arrogating the right to exercise your own when it suits you.

You have belittled fellow parliamentarians and your fellow citizens from behind a screen of unearned wealth and privilege.

You have lied to your own constituents and continue to broadcast information you know is false for political gain. You chose to disrespect Parliament by ostentatiously feigning sleep on its front bench – an act of unspeakable arrogance for which you have shown no contrition.

Now you maintain that a Prime Minister of the United Kingdom who has misled Parliament should not be held accountable for it.

I have hard evidence for all the above.

Mr Rees-Mogg, I have grave doubts that you are a Christian at all. You are probably the only person who really knows; although I must say that, if you are a Christian, you are the most damnably odd one I have ever come across. Although myself an atheist, I take this time of year very seriously. Indeed, I think the story of Holy Week and the death and resurrection of Jesus is the greatest story ever told, or at least the greatest I have ever heard. But perhaps I am just a damnably odd atheist.

You are, of course, entitled to express whatever you wish within the law. I am simply asking you not to do so this Easter Sunday as a mark of respect both to others and, if He does exist, to the Christ who died in great part for opposing the very hypocrisy of which you are such a signal representative.

At the very least it would show that you possess some empathy, for there are, I believe, millions for whom your silence, however brief, will bring this Sunday’s meaning and message a little closer. And if you are indeed a Christian, should you not wish to encourage that?

I wish you, otherwise, a very Happy Easter.

Yours sincerely,

Peter Roberts