Hammond was never going to peddle the no-deal myth
So, farewell then, Philip Hammond, chancellor of the exchequer and very possibly the only adult left in the cabinet room. That David Davis, our chirpy but clueless former Brexit Bulldog, is being talked up as the new chancellor says much about the strangeness of British politics. HM Treasury enjoys a reputation for being a Rolls-Royce machine, but it could not carry such an incubus as the likeable but intellectually underpowered Mr Davis. Mercifully, the job is more likely to go to the vastly more able Sajid Javid; but beware that he is no pragmatist.
Mr Javid is in fact a pretty hardline neo-Thatcherite and a votary of the cult of Ayn Rand, a “radical for
capitalism”, mid-20th century novelist, philosopher and libertarian. The welfare state and the NHS lie at his mercy. Only in today’s Tory party can Mr Javid’s views be thought unremarkable: he will make George Osborne look like Mother Teresa. We seem to be in the middle of an English nationalist Thatcherite putsch, or at least an attempted one. Meanwhile, the rest of the nation – about 66 million people minus 160,000 Tory members – wonder when and how the madness will end. Soon, they pray, including if it means abandoning Brexit as a bad job.
Mr Hammond never stood a chance of fitting in with the new regime, and he knew it. In a parallel universe, the relative paradise where an unworkable Brexit was never attempted, Mr Hammond would be an outside bet to move into No 10, rather than being held up as some sort of Brexit saboteur, no doubt soon to be targeted by Leave.EU for deselection and the usual Twitter torments.
His crime, if it is one, is to do everything in his power to prevent no-deal Brexit. He is right to put the country first: the judgement he and others must continue to make is that any damage done by a Corbyn minority or even majority government can in due course be repaired; there will be no such opportunities after an irreversible no-deal Brexit. Hence Mr Hammond’s reluctance as chancellor to waste much time or money on no-deal planning, the only effect of which would have been to terrify business and crash investment.
Besides, there is no point in fostering the myth of a managed no-deal Brexit. There is simply no amount of government borrowing and investment that can fully make up for the hit the economy would take in such an event. The UK would languish for most of the 2020s either in a slump or coming out of one, steadily growing poorer than almost every other developed or emerging nation, unable to preserve living standards, public services or overseas interests. The UK would be back in its old role as the sick man of Europe. The Tory party would not survive such a catastrophe in any case, nor deserve to.
Last October, Mr Hammond gave us a frank insight into his relationship with Boris Johnson; it was mutual incomprehension. Mr Hammond’s account of one conversation about Brexit went as follows: “Boris sits there and at the end of it he says, ‘Yeah but, er, there must be a way, I mean, if you just, if you, erm, come on, we can do it Phil, we can do it. I know we can get there’. And that’s it.”
It does sound familiar. No wonder Mr Hammond has little desire to serve under Mr Johnson, and will even resign before he is sacked by him. He was never going to saddle up his unicorn and join the charge of the Boris Brexit Brigade. He is far better off taking the struggle for sanity to the back benches. He will make a fine leader of the real Conservative Party. He might even become “box office”.