If our chest-puffing Chancellor doesn’t believe in a glorious future after Brexit, he should quit and join the Lib Dems

FOR a priest of such happy-clappy tendencies, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, was hand- wringingly pessimistic yesterday — a veritable Jeremiah.

But there was no great surprise in that, for His Grace was discussing Brexit, and no subject is more certain to plunge our stubborn liberal grandees into a spluttering funk.

Archbishop Welby, so upbeat when it comes to ‘spreading the good news’ with his banjobilly church colleagues (you may recall bongo drummers and partly clothed African dancers in Canterbury Cathedral when he was enthroned), sounded tetchy yesterday.

He wailed to Radio 4’s Today that the chances of Brexit passing through Parliament in the next 18 months were ‘infinitesimally small’. He wanted the matter removed from the Government’s hands and entrusted to a cross-party committee of ‘ experts’ led by ‘ someone trusted in the political world’.

Did he mean himself?

Treasonous

Brexit — marvellous, liberating, nation-affirming Brexit — continues to bring out the very worst in our Establishment.

Here is the greatest opportunity this country has had for 100 years, a chance to re-ignite our world trade and shake off an over-mighty bureaucracy. Instead, our politicians and civic leaders are doing all they can to make it fail.

Their behaviour, which will inevitably boost the hand of Brussels negotiators, is a disgrace. Given it can only harm our nation’s sovereign interest, you could call it treasonous, were such a word still in use, which sadly it is not.

Since last summer’s Leave vote by a clear majority, our lords and masters have been in a huff. Westminster and Whitehall’s People Who Know Best have tried to delay our departure from their beloved EU.

At first they simply pretended it had not happened. Then they set the lawyers on the case. Then they hoped the Lords would block the process. And yet, Brexit continued serenely. Now they say it ‘won’t make any difference’ and ‘will take longer than expected’.

In the last week, this petulant behaviour has reached new heights — or should that be lows? — as Remainers have capitalised on the Prime Minister’s absence on holiday.

It began on the eve of Theresa May’s departure for a week’s holiday in the Italian Alps when Chancellor Philip Hammond hosted a Treasury drinks party. He spent much of the evening boasting that he was winning his battles against Cabinet colleagues on publicspending constraints and his efforts to water down Brexit.

Such end- of- summer-term parties are generally dull affairs, when ministers stick to pre-holiday pleasantries. Not so with Mr Hammond.

I understand that he paraded like a peacock and gave reporters plenty of ammunition for ‘Cabinet at war’ and ‘Hammond sees off rivals’ stories. Chief among them were claims that the Government wanted a long ‘transition’ period as Britain cut free from Brussels.

Remainers are keen on a transition period as they hope its delays will prove permanent.

What made Mr Hammond’s behaviour so odd was the fact that Mrs May’s Government had just had a strong week.

In the last days of the Commons term, Downing Street stabilised a feverish political mood and ministers highlighted Labour’s betrayal of the youth vote by reneging on its promise to clear students’ debts.

That progress was imperilled by the vain Hammond pushing himself centre-stage.

Just as his treachery was fading, we heard from Home Secretary Amber Rudd.

Like the Chancellor, Ms Rudd was (perhaps is still) a vehement supporter of Remain. Her City PR-man brother, Roland Rudd, was one of that campaign’s chief organisers. With Mrs May out of the country, Ms Rudd took to the airwaves to discuss immigration plans.

Immigration was one of the main issues in the referendum, an area in which the political elite had shown itself dangerously adrift from public opinion. No 10 hoped its announcement of a registration scheme for EU nationals would reassure voters that post-Brexit Britain would keep a check on EU citizens working here.

Thanks to ‘Remainer Rudd’, that announcement was obscured. Either by incompetence or calculation, she managed to achieve a quite different emphasis. Instead of reporting the encouraging plan, the media concentrated on her blithe insistence that there would be no ‘cliff edge’ and that it would pretty much be immigration as normal after we formally left the EU.

Can she really be so deaf to public opinion to think that is what the voters wanted?

Her remarks may have been part of a choreographed plan by Remainers to sideline proBrexit figures Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and David Davis.

Idiotic

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems’ maudlin new leader, Sir Vince Cable, was trudging round the broadcasting studios practically ringing his plague bell, warning the world that we were doomed. He claimed that Brexit might never happen.

The same, lo and behold, was soon said by the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. And they were cheered on by former Chancellor George Osborne, now a newspaper editor.

It might be tempting to write off all this as mere ‘ Silly Seasonitis’, the customary over-inflation of marginal news during the summer weeks.

And within an hour of Ms Rudd making her remarks, one of her own junior ministers, Brandon Lewis, was speaking in more muscular terms. For its part, No 10 has confirmed that free movement will end when we leave the EU.

But such slap-downs should not be necessary. Ministers should be devoted to securing the best deal possible from the EU. Undisciplined chatter harms our national prospects.

The EU’s negotiators must be delighted that London is in such apparent disarray.

Every time a minister spouts forth about Brexit, it makes it harder for David Davis to insist to his EU counterparts that his ‘red lines’ are indeed red. Every time the idiotic Hammond blows forth, it probably adds a billion pounds to our exit bill.

Foreign Secretary Johnson was obliged to deny reports that he was contemplating resigning as a result of Cabinet feuding. This rumour was only put about by the malevolent Cable, but in an atmosphere so poisoned by Hammond and Rudd, it was believed.

Vengeful

For what it is worth, Boris has not been stirring the pot against Hammond.

Naturally, No 10 is strongly irritated by the Chancellor’s behaviour. Since the General Election, he may have considered himself to be ‘unsackable’, but that is not to say that he should not watch his step.

It will be interesting to see how activists react to him at Tory conference in the autumn. His latest sally, in French newspaper Le Monde, in which he said he does not want Britain to introduce lower taxes than the EU, is perversely anti-Tory. It is probably not even true to his own core beliefs.

Has Mr Hammond become a little drunk on plotting? Has he been hypnotised by the vengeful Osborne? Or is he simply unaware of how much voters dislike the status quo?

They voted Leave because they are fed up with the ‘experts’ Archbishop Welby so worships, who have long sold out to Europe on the cheap.

Brexit offers a glorious future but it will only be achieved if our politicians pull together.

And if Philip Hammond does not believe in it, and if he really does subscribe to high taxes and Europeanism, he should resign his great office and join the Liberal Democrats.