Hammond’s 4am text backing Boris
PHILIP Hammond offered to back Boris Johnson for the Tory leadership in a desperate attempt to keep his job, it emerged yesterday.
The Chancellor is reported to have texted his Cabinet rival at 4am on the morning after the election to offer his support when it looked like Theresa May could be forced from office.
Mr Hammond is said to have proposed a deal in which he remained as Chancellor, with David Davis handling Brexit while Mr Johnson could ‘run the shop’.
The proposal was put as Mr Johnson sat with friends digesting the fallout from the disastrous election result in the early hours of June 9.
Mr Johnson told friends: ‘Philip’s just texted me. He’s 100 per cent behind me if I go for it. Clearly he wants to be Chancellor.’
The claim emerged in a new book on Brexit and the election by political journalist Tim Shipman. The book cites a friend of Mr Johnson’s saying he was ‘circumspect’ about the early hours offer from Mr Hammond. An ally of Mr Hammond also confirmed the extraordinary intervention saying the Chancellor initially thought Mr Johnson ‘could be the answer’ if Mrs May decided to quit.
Mr Hammond’s offer was made despite strained relations between the two men who have found themselves on opposite sides of the Brexit debate in Cabinet.
As the leading Remainer in Cabinet, Mr Hammond has clashed repeatedly with Mr Johnson over issues such as the need for a transition deal. The Chancellor has been withering in private about Mr Johnson’s abilities since he returned to government, criticising his ‘lack of interest in detail’.
But at the time of the election he feared he was facing the sack. Mr Hammond was sidelined during the election campaign and subjected to a series of brutal Downing Street briefings. During the campaign Mrs May publicly refused to endorse her Chancellor, and No 10 insiders even ‘roleplayed’ a Cabinet reshuffle in which he would be sacked.
Desperate to keep his job he appears to have briefly decided to throw in his lot with Mr Johnson, who many Tories believed could become prime minister within hours of the election. One source who discussed the leadership with the Chancellor that morning said he thought Mr Johnson could head a triumvirate in which Mr Davis ‘could run Brexit, (Hammond) could run the economy and Boris could run the shop’.
Mr Hammond is said to have considered himself ‘too grey’ to make his own bid for the top job and saw the proposal as a ‘solution’ to the election debacle. The plan dissolved when it became clear Mrs May was not going to resign, and the two men resumed hostilities soon afterwards.
The new book, serialised in the Sunday Times, also reveals that David Cameron and Sir John Major were among those encouraging Home Secretary Amber Rudd to mount a challenge in the event of Mrs May stepping aside.
Meanwhile, allies of Mr Davis were involved in collecting the names of MPs willing to call for Mrs May to resign. The Brexit Secretary was aware of the plot and did nothing to discourage it.
The revelations expose the fragility of Mrs May’s grip on power with Mr Hammond, Mr Johnson, Miss Rudd and Mr Davis all embroiled in leadership plots in the aftermath of the election.