Annunziata Rees-Mogg

Annunziata Mary Rees-Mogg (əˌnʊntsiˈɑːtə; born 25 March 1979) is a freelance journalist whose focus is finance, economics, and European politics and was a British Brexit Party then Conservative politician during 2019 and into early 2020. She has been a leader writer for The Daily Telegraph, deputy editor of MoneyWeek, and editor of the European Journal, a Eurosceptic magazine owned by Bill Cash's think tank, the European Foundation. Formerly active in Conservative Party politics, she was added to the Conservative Party's A-List by David Cameron. She stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative parliamentary candidate in the 2005 and 2010 general elections. On 12 April 2019, she was selected as a candidate for the Brexit Party in the East Midlands constituency in the European Parliament elections, and won a seat. She resigned the party whip in December 2019 to support the Conservative Party's Brexit strategy. She later rejoined the Conservative Party in January 2020. Annunziata Mary Rees-Mogg is one of the daughters of William Rees-Mogg, Baron Rees-Mogg, a former editor of The Times, and his wife Gillian Shakespeare Morris; she is the youngest sister of Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg. She joined the Conservative Party at the age of five. She later said of this "I was too young to be a Young Conservative, so I joined the main party. Aged eight I was out canvassing, proudly wearing my rosette." She was educated at Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith, West London, an independent day school for girls. There, she took A Levels in History, Chemistry and Economics, which she has called "a very odd mix". After leaving school in 1997, she decided against going to university, and instead tried a series of different jobs in journalism, investment banking, publishing, public relations, and stockbroking. In 1998, she moved with her family to Mells, Somerset. In 2003 she set up Trust the People, a campaign for a referendum on the European Constitution aimed at those too young to have voted in the Common Market referendum of 1975.