William Rees-Mogg - Telegraph He was seen as a radical editor, making the reporting on The Times more investigative and its opinions more challenging. He was in the vanguard of the Tory modernisers in the Edward Heath era. During the latter part of his life, his regular articles in The Times, sometimes strayed into the realms of pontification, but they always carried weight and authority and were often quoted in the House of Commons. This was regarded as one of the most influential pieces of post-war British political journalism. But Douglas-Home rather spoiled that boast when he said later that he had already decided to quit before the piece appeared - and anyway, he lost the election. Later Rees-Mogg, in an article in The Times which other newspapers turned into front-page news, described John Major, the then Prime Minister as "over-promoted, unfit to govern and lacking self-confidence. His ideal level of political competence would be Deputy Chief Whip or something of that standing. This was immediately denounced by Sir Norman Fowler, who was Tory Party chairman at the time, as "the authentic voice of the Patrician Tendency - pure snobbery." There was no questioning the paper's authority under his editorship, but his tenure of office ended in tears when he was succeeded by Harold Evans. The staff had formed a group called Journalists of the Times which opposed Rupert Murdoch's 1981 takeover. Possibly ill-advisedly, Rees-Mogg assumed leadership of the group and unsuccessfully sought an alternative buyer which, in his view, would have guaranteed the paper's editorial independence. Later, he threw his reputation behind Murdoch, and the staff felt betrayed. In his maiden speech in the House of Lords in 1989 he advanced an eccentric constitutional theory that claimed power for the Upper House to block Commons legislation on the machinery of justice. In July, 1993, three High Court judges unanimously rejected Rees-Mogg's contention that the Major Government could not lawfully ratify the Maastricht Treaty because Parliament had not approved the social protocol. They ordered Rees-Mogg to pay the costs, estimated at hundreds of thousands of pounds. One critic at the time described the action as being characteristic of the former editor - "showy, mischievous, slightly absurd, but with a dash of plausibility." When he was chairman of the Broadcasting Standards Council, Rees-Mogg put Coronation Street through the hoops. He said it was a relic of the Macmillan era and bore little resemblance to modern society. He said the famous soap did not have enough ethnic minorities in it. Elsewhere, he held a number of appointments: He was High Sheriff of Somerset in 1978, chairman and proprietor of Pickering and Chatto Ltd, booksellers and publishers, a director of General Electric, and chairman of the Arts Council of Great Britain, 1982 to 1989. And although he sat in the House of Lords as a cross-bencher, he twice unsuccessfully fought a parliamentary seat as a Conservative candidate: Chester-le-Street in 1956 (by-election) and in 1959 (general election).