Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg talking to UnHerd's Charlie Pickles.


January 19, 2018   < 1

The “bookseller” – as it began – isn’t the only market-dominating, US tech firm (although, as Senator Marco Rubio argued in his entry to UnHerd’s under-reported series, it’s not clear that some of them are American anymore). Google and Facebook, in particular, are dominating markets for eg search and advertising. Apple has the cash on hand to keep ahead of competitors for some time to come.

In this final instalment of our interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg it was to this subject area – of technology and the power of the giant tech firms that we (briefly) turned.

If Messrs Bezos, Cook and Zuckerberg etc are interested in the Moggster’s opinions we have one piece of good news and one piece of bad news:

  • Answering Charlotte Pickles’ questions he showed no interest in action to cut the market share of any of these big firms.
  • The bad news for them is he wants to end their special status. They must all bear the same legal responsibilities as, eg, other cab companies if (yes, we’re looking at you Uber) if they organise journeys for people from A to B. Equally online publishers, says JRM, shouldn’t escape the regime that newspapers must abide by, if online tech companies do publish (or ‘platform’) stories (after this week it’s no longer quite clear what, eg, Facebook’s plan is re news).

The two previous instalments of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s interview with UnHerd – covering our core themes – can be read by clicking on the links below. And if you want to really get to grips with the huge year that 2017 was for the California-headquarted economic and technological super companies do read a 15 point briefing from our tech editor, Nigel Cameron. “Big tech’s tipping point year” was published yesterday.


Tim Montgomerie was most recently a columnist and comment editor for The Times of London. Before that journalistic turn he was steeped in centre right politics, founding the Conservative Christian Fellowship, then the Centre for Social Justice and, just over ten years ago, ConservativeHome.com.

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