 In October 2019, Rees-Mogg suggested that George Soros was allegedly the "funder-in-chief" of the Remain campaign, leading to criticism by Labour MPs.Counter to the Conservatives' U-turn on turning state schools into academies, Rees-Mogg is a proponent of academy-based education, reasoning that it gives schools more freedom from local education authorities to make decisions and cuts down on bureaucracy.While defending the list of Conservative candidates for the 2005 election, he said that it would be foolish to disbar candidates who attended Oxford and Cambridge Universities – typically considered the most prestigious universities in the UK – from selection, saying that the country would not be best run by "potted plants".