It’s probably the case that I don’t have a lot in common with Jacob Rees-Mogg.

I didn’t go to Eton and I’m not against gay marriage, abortion or laws to protect the environment.

I’m not a Brexiteer and I don’t own a city firm that has moved to Dublin to escape the damage Brexit will do to Britain.

And if I had children I wouldn’t be cruel enough to call them Alfred Wulfrid Leyson Pius, Anselm Charles Fitzwilliam or Sixtus Dominus Boniface.

However I have discovered some common ground with the publicity-shy young fogey MP. We both dislike the term “fit for purpose”.

The new leader of the House of Commons has published a list of words and phrases that his staff are banned from using. “Fit for purpose” is one of them.

I would agree. Back in 2006 the then Home Secretary John Reid used it to describe the Home Office.

Then suddenly everyone began using it for anything even mildly imperfect.

I don’t know who first said “going forward” instead of “in the future”, but it became equally common, and equally irritating.

I’d ban that one. And Mr Rees-Mogg could have added “key stakeholder” to the banned list while he was at it, or indeed “key” anything.

Unless key means the device that fits in a lock, words like “important”, “vital” or “crucial” are better. You might say they were all fit for purpose.

Using tired old words and phrases you’ve picked up from somebody else is a sure sign of a lack of imagination, an inability to come up with your own words.

Some of Mr Rees-Mogg’s other bans are more questionable. He wants to veto “very”, “due to”, “ongoing”, “equal”, “yourself” and “invest in”. His staff are also forbidden from using “lot”, “got” and “I am pleased to learn”.

They aren’t allowed to use a comma before “and”, and after a full stop they have to leave two spaces, not one.

These rules are just stupid. Omitting a comma before “and” can cause confusion. Say, for example, that an author wants to dedicate a book to more than one person. The dedication could read: “To my parents, Charles Dickens, and JK Rowling”.

If we omit the second comma it reads: “To my parents, Charles Dickens and JK Rowling,” and means something rather different.

Or write: “The guest list of notable people included a famous comedy duo, Prince Charles and the Archbishop of Canterbury.” Again a comma before the “and” might cause less offence.

A double space after a full stop is an old-fashioned rule from the days when manual typewriters gave the same space to every letter. It was a way to make the separation of sentences clear.

It’s not necessary nowadays, unless Mr Rees-Mogg is also insisting that his staff use old-fashioned typewriters – which I wouldn’t put past him.

And he’s insisting on imperial measurements. One of the crazinesses of the modern world is that children are taught metric measurements at school and have been since the early 1970s, and then enter a world of feet and inches, pounds and ounces and miles per hour. We need more metric, not less.

Many of his rules show a complete ignorance of language. Over the years new words are invented, others fall into misuse and yet others develop new meanings. They always have and always will. “Tweet” had a different meaning 10 years ago.

The process happens gradually but trying to resist it is futile. It’s why we no longer speak Anglo-Saxon and the Italians no longer speak Latin.

Once upon a time Shakespeare and the King James Bible were modern English. Even writing from 100 years ago has a different flavour from today.

So his attempt to ban the word “hopefully” unless it means “in a hopeful way” is doomed.

He’s happy with: “She hopefully asked for a pay rise.”

He won’t allow it to mean “it is to be hoped”. We aren’t allowed: “Hopefully it won’t rain tomorrow.”

But it’s been used in this way for 60 years now and there’s not much anyone can do about it. Language won’t stand still.

Mr Rees-Mogg is an enthusiast for the biggest change in decades, the greatest upheaval since World War Two. And yet he can’t let a word change its meaning.

If Boris Johnson is in power long enough for a cabinet reshuffle, he shouldn’t let Mr Rees-Mogg near the treasury.

Given the chance he’d probably reintroduce pounds, shillings and pence.