Hammond ‘brought to heel’ over soft Brexit
Rebel Chancellor changes tune to insist we WILL be out of EU in 2019
PHILIP Hammond has been brought to heel over the terms of Britain’s departure from the EU, Brexiteers claimed last night.
After a summer of bitter Cabinet infighting, the Chancellor and International Trade Secretary Liam Fox yesterday put on a public show of unity.
In a joint newspaper article, they agreed Britain would leave the EU single market and customs union immediately upon Brexit in March 2019, and that there would be no attempt to stay in the EU by the back door.
Crucially, they accepted that the length of any transition period would be time limited and that Britain would be free to negotiate trade deals with third countries.
Mr Hammond enraged Brexit-supporting MPs over the summer as he appeared to freelance over the terms of transition while Prime Minister Theresa May has been on holiday.
He suggested transition could last up to four years. And he enraged Dr Fox by suggesting Britain would not need to be able to sign new trade deals with non-EU countries during the transition period.
Last night former Brexit department minister David Jones said the article showed the Chancellor had ‘rowed back’. He said: ‘It was a clear case of when the cat’s away the mice will play. Theresa May left them and we had all kinds of stuff from Hammond which was unhelpful including what appeared to be a misrepresentation of Liam’s position. By getting the two protagonists together to come up with an agreed statement looks very much like No10 knocking heads together.
‘It also makes clear the PM’s position has not changed at all from her Lancaster House speech in January. Her position is enormously strengthened because she has shown she can get Mr Hammond to come to heel.’
Another Brexiteer, senior Tory backbencher Nigel Evans, said: ‘The flying of kites is a well- seasoned tradition especially during the summer months and that kite has now been cut adrift and is floating away. There will be no endless transition period.’
Mr Hammond and Dr Fox’s Sunday Telegraph article is an attempt to put on a show of Cabinet unity ahead of Mrs May’s return from holiday this week and to paper over the very real enmity between the two men. Mr Hammond backed Remain while Dr Fox was a leading supporter of Brexit.
They wrote that a transition period was needed to give businesses confidence they would be able to carry on trading normally, ‘but it cannot be indefinite; it cannot be a back door to staying in the EU. We are both clear that during this period the UK will be outside the customs union and will be a ‘‘third country’’, not a party to EU treaties’.
Former Labour foreign secretary David Miliband said in the Observer that Brexit was an ‘unparalleled act of economic selfharm’. He called for another vote on the final deal with the EU – either a second referendum or in Parliament. Leading Conservative Remainer Anna Soubry indicated in The Mail on Sunday that she could be prepared to join with politicians from other parties to stop the country ‘staggering recklessly’ towards a hard break with Brussels.