Crisis summit as ministers hit out at Hammond over ‘no deal’
THERESA May is to host a Cabinet crisis summit about plans for a “no deal” Brexit amid rising tensions between ministers over EU negotiations.
The Prime Minister’s aides ordered senior frontbenchers to clear their diaries for a meeting on September 13 for further contingency measures in case Brussels talks break down.
Her summons followed concerns at No 10 that Brexit-backing ministers are at loggerheads with pro-Brussels Chancellor Philip Hammond.
EU Exit Secretary Dominic Raab and his predecessor David Davis both hit out at Treasury forecasts for the economy after a no-deal Brexit yesterday.
An instruction to prepare for the Cabinet summit was sent out last Friday after Mr Hammond sparked a fresh row by warning that a no-deal Brexit could wipe 10 per cent off the country’s national income.
The row escalated yesterday, when Mr Raab dismissed the Treasury’s economic forecasts as unreliable.
He said: “I’m always chary of any forecast because most of them have been proved to be wrong.”
Without naming Mr Hammond, he added: “We need to treat some of the forecasts with a measure of caution.”
Mr Raab also pointed out that recent official estimates of GDP growth next year “have been revised up”. Mr Davis, who quit the Cabinet in protest at Mrs May’s Brexit plan, yesterday described the Treasury as the home of “misery merchants”. He said the forecast quoted by Mr Hammond was “either spectacularly incompetent or deliberate”. He added: “I know what I think. It was an attempt to frighten the population into imagining the most terrible consequences of leaving the EU without a deal.”
Mr Davis described the Treasury intervention as “disgraceful” and warned it could “undermine the Government hand in striking a deal with the EU”.
He added: “My advice to all my old colleagues in Cabinet is simple – ignore the misery merchants of the Treasury, stop fearing things that will never happen and start planning for the real opportunities that this great country can grasp when it sets its mind to it.”
Last Thursday, Mr Hammond was accused of launching a “dodgy Project Fear” when he suggested that GDP could fall and borrowing could be about £80billion a year higher by 2033/4 if Britain resorted to World Trade Organisation terms after a no-deal Brexit.