Comment

WITH Theresa May safely out of the country and hiking with her husband high in the Alps, Chancellor Philip Hammond seized the opportunity yesterday to indulge in that favourite Tory pastime: Treachery.

Showing shameless disloyalty to his leader, ‘Spreadsheet Phil’ took to the airwaves to declare a new, softer Government policy on Brexit. He said that although Britain will still leave the EU in March 2019, there will now be a further ‘transition period’ of three years where virtually nothing will change.

True, Mrs May had already conceded there would need to be a short period of adjustment beyond the March 2019 deadline to avoid disruption to trade and services. But this is a major shift.

An extra three years will take us nearly up to the next election. During that time, we would almost certainly remain tied to the single market and customs union and therefore be forced to continue allowing free movement of EU nationals.

And as long as we stay attached to the single market, Brussels will surely insist that British judges remain subservient to the European Court.

So it will be five years before we seize back control – at least. At the end of that time, who’s to say there won’t be a further ‘transition period’? Could we find ourselves stuck indefinitely in a bizarre half-in, half-out limbo?

This is not what 17.4million people voted for in the referendum. They wanted to take back sovereignty – the right to decide for ourselves who can and who cannot come in and out of this country, and the right to make our own laws. Anything less would be a betrayal of those people’s votes.

Tactically, this announcement is also madness. By signalling so early to Brussels that we are in no hurry to leave, we give them carte blanche to delay and obfuscate. Only yesterday, the prime minister of Malta, Joseph Muscat, said he now believes Brexit will never happen and other EU leaders are undoubtedly beginning to think – and hope – the same.

In any case, with our national debt now standing at a terrifying £1.75trillion and public spending still not under control, why isn’t Mr Hammond concentrating all his attentions on his day job at the Exchequer instead of acting as if he were running the country?

His performance as Chancellor so far has been deeply unimpressive. In his first Budget he tried to saddle five million self-employed workers with a sharp rise in their National Insurance contributions. Just a week later he was forced into a humiliating U-turn after it was pointed out that this was in direct breach of a key manifesto commitment.

He has also pushed back the date when Britain’s annual deficit will be wiped out from 2020 to 2025, claiming Britain is ‘weary’ of austerity. So every year until then our total debt, along with the huge cost of servicing it, will continue to grow – placing an even more onerous burden on our children and grandchildren.

The biggest mystery, however, is why Mr Hammond – rather than the Brexit Secretary, Foreign Secretary, or indeed Mrs May – should be pronouncing on Brexit at all when he has no direct involvement in the negotiations.

He was, of course, a fervent Remainer during the referendum campaign and closely associated with George Osborne’s Project Fear. Having lost that battle, many will suspect that he is still a Remainer intent on sabotaging Brexit.

This, let’s not forget, is a man who would have been sacked if the Tories had won their expected majority at the general election in June. He doesn’t speak for the Prime Minister, he doesn’t speak for the Cabinet – and he certainly doesn’t speak for the British people.