HAMMOND GETS BOTH BARRELS FROM BORIS
Open warfare breaks out in Cabinet as pressure grows on Mrs May to axe her Brexit ‘road-block’ Chancellor
THE Cabinet was at war last night after Boris Johnson accused the Chancellor of trying to block Brexit.
In an extraordinary intervention, the Foreign Secretary branded Philip Hammond’s Treasury ‘the heart of Remain’.
The comments will pile pressure on the Prime Minister to sack her Chancellor.
Mr Johnson also warned that the Government was in danger of delivering a Brexit betrayal and dismissed Treasury warnings about the economic impact of leaving the European Union as ‘mumbo jumbo’.
And, in a swipe at Theresa May, he suggested Donald Trump would make a better job of negotiating Brexit, saying: ‘He’d go in bloody hard… There’d be all
sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he’d gone mad. But actually you might get somewhere.’
The Foreign Secretary also suggested he would resign if Mrs May agreed to a final deal that left the UK shackled to Brussels. ‘I will be prepared to compromise over time, but I will not compromise over the destination,’ he said.
Two Cabinet sources yesterday told the Daily Mail that Mr Hammond was undermining the UK’s position by stalling on preparations for a no-deal Brexit.
One senior Eurosceptic said: ‘Everything he does is designed to damage Brexit. Every morning he gets up and thinks about how he can delay it or stop it.’
Mr Johnson’s comments last night threatened to overshadow Mrs May’s attendance at the G7 summit in Canada. They emerged as she was in the air, and there was no immediate response from her closest aides.
It came on a day of heightened tensions over Brexit, pushing the Government to the
‘They’re terrified of this nonsense’
brink of chaos. In other developments:
Mrs May was forced to make Brexit concessions to David Davis after he threatened to resign over plans which critics fear could keep Britain in the EU by the back door;
Ministers published a list of concessions on the EU Withdrawal Bill in a bid to head off a rebellion by Tory Remainers;
Pro-Brussels MPs warned they could still join forces with Labour next week in a bid to keep Britain in the customs union;
Mr Johnson revealed that Mrs May will use the G7 summit to unveil plans for a new ‘rapid response unit’ to counter Russian cyber-attacks and assassinations;
The Foreign Secretary warned that China would ‘try and stiff us’ in trade talks.
Whitehall insiders acknowledged that the Government was facing turmoil as a result of Brexit. One said: ‘It is absolute chaos.’ International Trade Secretary Liam Fox said Brexit had turned into a ‘complex and sometimes turbulent episode in this country’s history’.
Mr Johnson’s comments, which were secretly recorded at a private dinner for Tory donors, blew the lid off the toxic row between Cabinet Brexiteers and the Chancellor.
A recording of Tuesday night’s dinner, obtained by BuzzFeed, reveals that Mr Johnson believes Brexit is in peril. He told the Conservative Way Forward group there was now a high chance that Mrs May would leave the UK ‘locked in orbit around the EU, in the customs union and to a large extent still in the single market’.
He said the outcome was being pushed by the Treasury, which was ‘basically the heart of Remain’.
Mr Johnson warned that ministers were ‘allowing the tail to wag the dog’ over the issue of the Northern Ireland border that is threatening to keep Britain shackled to the customs union. He said prophecies of doom in the Treasury and Whitehall were overblown. ‘What they don’t want is friction at the borders,’ he said. ‘They’re sacrificing all the medium and longterm gains out of fear of short-term disruption. They’re terrified of this nonsense. It’s mumbo jumbo.’
Mr Johnson hinted that Mrs May was poised to take a tougher stance in negotiations. ‘I think Theresa is going to go into a phase where we are much more combative,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to face the fact there may now be a meltdown. OK? I don’t want anybody to panic during the meltdown. No bloody panic. It’s going to be all right in the end.’
And in a breach of protocol, he said Mrs May would put forward a plan at the G7 to deal with Russian aggression. He said: ‘She will be putting forward a British plan that will have global support to set up a rapid response unit to identify Russian malfeasance… whether it’s cyber warfare, assassinations, calling it out and identifying it.’ Eurosceptic MPs last night backed Mr Johnson. Former Brexit minister David Jones said: ‘Once you strip away the Boris style, what you’re left with is some pretty sensible points.’ Fellow Tory Andrew Bridgen said: ‘Boris is rightly articulating the fears of many of us who support leaving the EU.’
Mr Hammond faced a Cabinet revolt last year as ministers urged him to open the purse strings for Brexit preparations.
Some ministers say they are still meeting resistance from the Treasury. A Cabinet source said: ‘We are probably already at the point where
it is getting difficult to leave without a deal.’
It came as large quantities of documents were leaked on social media last night containing apparent concessions on the EU Withdrawal Bill by ministers to appease diehard Tory remainers. The Treasury flatly denied the Chancellor was trying to sabotage Brexit.
Friends of Mr Johnson said he had never wanted his criticism to be made public. ‘This was a private dinner ... so it is sad and very disappointing that it has been covertly recorded and distributed to the media,’ a source said.
÷ Boris Johnson’s deputy sparked anger last night by suggesting there could be a second Brexit vote.
Speaking in Berlin, Sir Alan Duncan, the Foreign Office minister, said: ‘It would just be possible to ask the people in a referendum if they liked the exit deal or not.’
WITH every month that has passed since January’s botched Cabinet reshuffle, it has become ever clearer what a glaring opportunity the Prime Minister missed to sack her errant Chancellor of the Exchequer, Philip Hammond.
yes, Mr Hammond tried his best in the Spring Statement to mute his defeatist Eeyore tendencies and sound upbeat about the state of the economy (and how could he not, with so many indicators pointing in the right direction?)
But not for a minute does this paper believe that the Government’s remainer-in-chief has truly changed his ways.
Indeed, there is growing evidence that behind the scenes, ‘Spreadsheet Phil’ is using the immense power of the Treasury – the spiritual home of Project Fear – to undermine Brexit.
Across Whitehall, Cabinet ministers are fuming at the lack of money to prepare for no deal. Despite promises from No 10 last year that the spending taps would be turned on, contingency planning has all but ground to a halt.
By deliberately obstructing these essential preparations, Mr Hammond invites the Commission to offer us the worst deal possible, and undermines Theresa May’s strongest bargaining card – her repeated insistence that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’.
This is nothing less than an unforgivable betrayal. But if he thinks this act of sabotage will convince the country to change its mind he is sorely wrong.