SAJID FURY OVER PM KNIFING

Chancellor walks out after brutal Boris power grab

SAJID Javid last night fired a parting blast at Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings after being ousted in a savage power grab.

In a showdown in the Cabinet room, Mr Johnson told the Chancellor that he could stay in the job only if he agreed to sack his aides and hand No 10 ‘joint’ control over economic policy.

Mr Javid chose to quit, telling the PM that ‘no self-respecting minister’ could stay on those terms. He is the first chancellor for decades to leave office without delivering a Budget. Rising star Rishi Sunak – a popular figure on the Tory benches – takes his place.

In an angry statement, Mr Javid said he had been left with ‘no option’ but to resign following Mr Johnson’s ultimatum. He warned the PM against surrounding himself with yes men, saying it was vital the Treasury ‘retains as much credibility as possible’.

In a thinly veiled swipe at Mr Cummings, who clashed repeatedly with him behind the scenes, he urged the

PM to choose advisers ‘that reflect the character and integrity you would wish to be associated with’.

Mr Johnson was said to be ‘surprised and disappointed’ by his decision to quit, which blew a hole in a meticulously planned Government reshuffle. In a day of Cabinet snakes and ladders:

■ The PM sacked a string of veteran ministers, including business secretary Andrea Leadsom, environment secretary Theresa Villiers and housing minister Esther McVey;

■ Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab, Home Secretary Priti Patel and Defence Secretary Ben Wallace kept their jobs;

■ Former Brexit minister Suella Braverman was appointed as Attorney General just weeks after declaring it was time to ‘take back control’ from the courts and judges;

■ Former defence minister, and arch-Brexiteer, Anne-Marie Trevelyan was promoted to the Cabinet as international development secretary in charge of the £14.5billion aid budget, which she has previously criticised;

■ Northern Ireland Secretary Julian Smith was sacked for alleged disloyalty over Brexit, just weeks after being praised for overseeing the restoration of Stormont power-sharing;

■ Justice Secretary Robert Buckland, one of the few prominent Remainers in the Cabinet, kept his job but his adviser was sacked;

■ The overall size of the Cabinet was cut to 26 – six fewer than previously – and the number of full Cabinet posts held by women fell by one to six, although Mrs Braverman will also attend;

■ Michael Gove was given an enhanced role at the Cabinet Office, where he will oversee preparations for the end of the Brexit transition period in December;

■ Alister Jack kept the Scottish Secretary post to which he was appointed seven months ago. The Dumfries and Galloway MP said he was ‘honoured’ and would ‘continue to stand up for the majority of Scots who voted in 2014 to remain part of a strong United Kingdom’.

Yesterday, Downing Street refused to say whether the tight tax and spending rules that had been put in place by Mr Javid would remain.

The Budget could also be delayed beyond its planned date of March 11.

Former Tory leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith last night predicted Mr Javid’s departure would lead to a recasting of the Treasury’s spending rules.

‘There will be fiscal rules, but they will be rules that Downing Street set for themselves to give themselves wriggle room to do what they want,’ he said.

Downing Street sources insisted that Mr Johnson made a ‘heartfelt plea’ to Mr Javid to stay during the tense meeting. The PM is understood to have told Mr Javid that he was the ‘best man for the job’. But he said he could not tolerate the growing briefing war between No 10 and the Treasury.

Mr Johnson warned there was a risk of the Government descending into a repeat of the dysfunctional Blair-Brown years.

Mr Javid’s departure was seen in Westminster as a victory for Mr Cummings, the PM’s chief aide.

The two men have clashed over a string of issues, including tax and spending, HS2 and the appointment of the governor of the Bank of England.

Mr Javid has never forgiven the PM’s enforcer for sacking his aide Sonia Khan last summer without consulting him.

Mr Cummings has been infuriated by unauthorised briefings from the Treasury in recent weeks and told the PM that the Chancellor’s aides had to go, setting up an ultimatum that saw Mr Javid walk out. One Tory source said: ‘It was a win-win for Cummings. Either the Chancellor accepted the humiliation being offered to him and sacrificed his independence, or he quit and Cummings got to put the golden boy in.’

Friends of Mr Javid were scathing about the appointment of Mr Sunak as Chancellor. One said: ‘There was lots of rubbish about Saj being “Chancellor In Name Only”. It was never true, but they’ve got one now.’

However, former Cabinet minister David Gauke said Mr Sunak was in a ‘strong position’. He added: ‘Although there will be a lot of talk about him being Boris Johnson’s placeman, if he wants to assert himself you could argue that he is pretty well unsackable. If I was Rishi, I’d be pretty determined to show that I was not a stooge, and demonstrate some independence pretty early on, especially in his Budget.’

Under the new arrangement, which Mr Sunak has agreed to, economic policy will be drawn up by the Prime Minister and Chancellor assisted by a joint team of political aides based in Downing Street, not the Treasury.

Treasury sources predicted Mr Javid’s removal could result in Mr Cummings pushing ahead with a spending spree at the Budget.

One said: ‘Cummings just wants to spend money, he’s not interested in fiscal discipline.’

INCLEMENT weather is forecast and if you are in a car anywhere near The Greatest Bridge In The World this weekend you may be there a while. The last time weather of this sort troubled our gleaming new corridor over the Forth – about three days ago – it had to be closed down until the risk presented to motorists by killer ice bombs falling from the upper reaches of its structure had subsided.

Around 70,000 commuters hoping to cross the 8,858ft structure were sent on a 35-mile diversion to use another bridge which has rarely been in receipt of gushing compliments. There again, the SNP was not the government in power during the Clackmannanshire Bridge job.

Anyway, in the event of another closure and Biblical numbers of Scots being forced west, away from the Greatest Bridge In The World to that other, less celebrated but weather-resistant one, some civil engineering food for thought may not go amiss.

Let me, then, try to offer some here. A tale of two bridges has unfolded this week and, when we come to consider their respective merits, we may alight on allegories for Scotland’s possible futures.

Biblical

One of those bridges has not been built yet and, if the Scottish Government is to be believed, will probably never happen.

Stretching 21 miles from Portpatrick in Wigtownshire to Larne in Northern Ireland this structure – let us call it the Boris Bridge – is ‘pie in the sky’ and ‘the usual smokescreen bluster’ from Mr Johnson, our Holyrood masters assure us.

Then there is that other bridge, the one Nicola Sturgeon stood on not 30 months ago and declared to be the greatest in the world.

From her vantage point at the Queensferry Crossing’s north tower she could surely behold the Forth Bridge, an internationally admired triumph of 19th century structural engineering which has been carrying trains across the Forth in all weathers for 130 years now.

She will also have spied its plainer cousin, the 1960s-built Forth Road Bridge.

It seems to have been able to handle a bit of bad weather too. But no, this new one was better. Let us call it the Nicola Bridge.

Now let us see whether what we know about the Boris Bridge and the Nicola Bridge can offer any insights as Scotland considers the way ahead. The longer, more wildly ambitious of the two, it cannot be denied, is promoted by a politician with a penchant for hyperbole.

There again, so is the shorter one. The difference is that building a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland would truly be an impressive achievement.

Building another bridge across the Forth alongside two existing ones, I would suggest with all due respect to the civil engineers involved, is rather less so.

Besides, do we have a problem now with ambition?

I daresay there were naysayers among the bystanders watching the pyramids at Giza go up.

When President Kennedy announced in May 1961 that America would put a man on the moon by the end of the decade, many questioned what planet he was on.

The Channel Tunnel, which has the longest underwater section of any tunnel in the world at 23.5 miles, was completed more than a quarter of a century ago, some 192 years after French mining engineer Albert Mathieu-Favier first proposed a passageway under the sea illuminated by oil lamps and used by horsedrawn coaches.

How bonkers these uppity dreamers are. Down with those that foist their big ideas on us. That is certainly one take on the Boris Bridge and you are entitled to it. Me, I prefer to see it as my favourite thing so far about a premiership which I was dreading.

Ambitious

For, as a wise man once remarked about Kennedy’s ‘We choose to go to the Moon’ speech, it spoke to our best impulses as a nation, not our worst.

So Beaufort’s Dyke in the North Channel is 30 miles long, up to 1,000ft deep and chock-full of munitions and toxic unmentionables.

Are the challenges not daunting on every truly ground-breaking civil engineering project?

And is progress best served, do you find, by a can-do or a can’t-do attitude?

I don’t know if the Boris Bridge will ever be built but I hope it does happen and, in the meantime, I applaud its boldness and vision. And, from a Prime Minister few of us imagined would be cosying up to Scots in his first few months in office, I appreciate the broader sentiments which lie behind the project.

For the Boris Bridge promises not simply a physical link between two nations of the Union but to reinforce the bond between all four.

If it comes to fruition, it promises to serve as a reminder of these islands’ proud industrial past and a harbinger, perhaps, of an equally illustrious future.

Little wonder the SNP shudder at the very notion of such a proposition.

It reeks of Britishness. And if, God forbid, it should succeed... oh, cover your eyes, tender Nationalists.

We turn now to the Nicola Bridge aka The Greatest Bridge In the World, a perfectly decent example of a cablestayed crossing, the likes of which can be found dotted all over the world.

China, for example, is out the door with them.

There are quite a few in Canada too, which is interesting because they are not exactly strangers to the odd wintry flurry in Vancouver and Manitoba.

Well our mid-priced, off-thepeg example of a cable-stayed bridge fulfilled its function fairly adequately for the first couple of years of its projected 120-year lifespan until this week, when it suffered the embarrassment of having to close while its much older neighbours remained open.

I suppose that, given the age of the structure and the fact that colder countries manage to keep their cable-stayed bridges open when it snows, there were always going to be red faces here. But how much more crimson for the excruciating Nationalist hype which greeted our one’s arrival.

Our First Minister, as we have seen, was positively Trump-esque in her choice of superlatives.

The excitable singer and separatist Pat Kane waxed about the ‘many hearts yearning 2 this beautiful bridge’ and asked in all sincerity: ‘Scotland was big enough, rich enough, smart enough 2 build it. Now – what next?’

Hmm... cross our fingers when it snows? Bring extra Murray Mints for the 35 mile diversion?

Exhilarating

The allegories I see lurking in this week’s tale of two bridges are these: the Boris Bridge is, rather like the Union itself, an altogether bigger and weightier proposition than Scotland on its own could take on.

It is confident, outwardlooking and, from where I stand at least, not a little exhilarating. Drive over the sea to Belfast? I can hardly wait. The Nicola Bridge is, rather like the Nationalism she espouses, small-time.

It is really just another cable-stayed bridge and, furthermore, one that needs attention already.

Those triumphalist Scots who puff it up as the magnificent symbol of an emerging nation are wrong-end-of-the telescope types who miss the real civil engineering wonder on the Forth though it is under their very noses.

Their hubristic babble was always at risk of a direct hit from a killer ice bomb.

So which bridge does it for you? An idle thought, perhaps, for your next attempt at a Queensferry crossing.