Jacob Rees-Mogg was paid more than £32,000 at the end of his first full month in employment at GB News, the latest register of MPs’ financial interests reveals.
The Tory MP’s first show was broadcast on 27 February. On 30 March he disclosed that he received £32,083.34 from the channel.
The Moggster said this payment was made in exchange for 40 hours of work, including preparation for his weekly show. The Chatterer calculates that this works out at £802 an hour. Not bad. But how does it compare with the many other Tory MPs who have been given slots on GB News?
Dehenna Davison, who hosted a weekly show between June 2021 and September 2022, was paid £1,879.17 a month for 16 hours of work. That is £117 an hour.
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Lee Anderson, the Conservative Party’s deputy chairman, has been on an annual salary of £100,000 since March. Anderson disclosed that he worked eight hours a week. If he worked 52 weeks of the year, that would be £240 an hour. With five weeks off, it would be £266 an hour.
Philip Davies’s latest disclosure shows that he was paid £9,466.49 on 30 March for 12 episodes, or 40 hours of work. That is £237 an hour. And Esther McVey, Davies’s wife and co-host, was paid £10,818.88 for eight episodes and 28 hours of work on 31 March. That’s £386 an hour.
So GB News pays Rees-Mogg well over double the rate of any of his Tory colleagues. The Chatterer wonders what they might make of this pay gap.
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PS, we are still waiting with bated breath for Nadine Dorries to disclose how much she is paid for her weekly show on TalkTV. It’s now been three months since her first show.
[See also: Why the prospect of Nadine Dorries’ stories worries Tories]