You are on the right lines, oldbatty
Very interesting article here about the books that JRM's father, William R-M wrote and their possible influence on his son:
alastaircampbell.org/2018/08/the-book-that-helps-you-better-understand-brexit-and-rees-mogg-part-2/
... the basic point, from an era before the word Brexit even existed, was that information technology was going to deliver the most sweeping and fastest revolution in history; that traditional institutions such as the nation-state would become obsolete, democracy itself would be called into question; and a kind of economic super-race (my phrase not his) would emerge amid the ‘commercialisation of sovereignty’, and for those of wealth a ‘Bermuda in the sky with diamonds’ (his phrases not mine) would become available to exploit, freed from the ‘predatory’ instincts of politicians who want to tax to pay for things like schools and hospitals, perish the thought. The title of the book is The Sovereign Individual. Fair to say Rees-Mogg assumed his hugely wealthy son would be one of them.
As a father of three, I know that it is wrong to assume children all adopt the views and manner of their parents. But equally it is right to assume there will be some crossover. I am sure that Rees-Mogg Jr broadly agrees with his father’s assertion that ‘the destruction of tradition has been a disaster to the moral order of the world.’ I can almost hear his voice, standing on the steps of Number 10 with a Daily Express petition calling for cuts in overseas aid, and echoing his father’s writing: ‘We believe that foreign aid and international development programmes have had the perverse effect of lowering the real incomes of poor people in poor countries by subsidising incompetent governments.’
We know too that he is likely to appreciate and agree with the many references to the importance of religion along the way, the belief in ‘dynamic morality,’ the complaint that ‘a high proportion of people in the growing cognitive elite have been given little religious or moral education in the family.’ Though whether Jacob’s sixth son, Sixtus Dominic Boniface Christopher, will appreciate learning from Grandpapa that the Pope after whom he was named caught syphilis from one of his mistresses and licensed prostitutes so he could tax their earnings is another matter. (Ha ha!)