Jacob Rees-Mogg sits in a Rolls-Royce and insists he will be become PM by 70 in resurfaced interview

A video of a 12-year-old Jacob Rees-Mogg setting out his plans to earn ‘millions or billions’ and become prime minister by the age of 70 has been newly-unearthed. 

Mr Rees-Mogg, now 52, revealed his ambitious goals during an interview with a French television channel in 1982 – which has been released by the archive of the French National Audiovisual Institute.

While sitting in the back of a Rolls Royce, donning a tweed jacket, tie and a Love Maggie badge, the future leader of the House of Commons also vows to remain a bachelor.  

Upon being asked if he hoped to marry and have children, the pre-prep pupil at Westminster Under School said: ‘I intend to stay a bachelor because I don’t want to get divorced and have the wife taking all my money, and that seems to be happening so often nowadays that I won’t take the risk.’  

He now has six children with Helena de Chair, who he married in 2007.  

The Conservative MP told the Times: ‘I remember the interview and fear that, six children later, it has blown my chances of being a credible 21st century Nostradamus.

‘Otherwise my only defence is that when I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’  

On his other life goals, the younger Rees-Mogg said: ‘When I am 30, I would like to be the managing director of GEC and hopefully by the time I am 70, when I am 70, I’d love to become prime minister.

‘At that age you can have made all your millions or billions and you will have got plenty of money and time to spend on politics.’   

The five-minute clip shows Mr Rees-Mogg boasting of having set up accounts with Barclays, LLoyds, National Westminster, Midland, the Post Office and even Harrods.  

‘I love money, always have done,’ he told the interviewer. 

Rees-Mogg went to school at Eton and is the son of William Rees-Mogg, a former editor of The Times and peer.  

‘Why, because you need money and with money you can make more money. And if you’ve got money, you can buy things, buy things that you want, I could buy this Rolls-Royce, something like that, lovely.’

The young investor had caught the attention of the French channel after attending the general meeting of the General Electric Company (GEC) and appearing on BBC Radio 4.

He tells the French interviewer how his father helped him invest £50 he had inherited from a late cousin into GEC some five years earlier. 

For his birthday, his father and former editor of the Times William Rees-Mogg gifted him more shares – inspiring his goal of becoming the head of GEC. 

However his plans were scuppered in 1999 when the company became defunct.

But he still made his millions as the founder of Somerset Capital Management. 

In in the interview, cutaway clips show a young Rees-Mogg buying some shares over the phone before he is seen practicing cricket and discussing a recent by-election while reading a newspaper. 

When asked about his badge on his tweed jacket the young Mr Rees-Mogg said: ‘Margaret Thatcher is the best prime minister this century and she is getting Britain out of the recession, she is cutting [the] public sector borrowing requirement, she is reducing inflation, she is reducing unemployment.’

While he was elected MP for North East Somerset in 2010, Mr Rees-Mogg has yet to make it do Downing Street. 

He found some support during the power vacuum left by Theresa May in 2019 – but ultimately decided to endorse Boris Johnson, who in turn appointed him leader of the House of Commons.   

Playing down his ambitions for the top job yesterday, Rees-Mogg added: ‘In 18 years I hope Boris will just be beginning the second half of his tenure.’