Fears Hammond could quit in row over Brexit
THE Treasury last night moved to quash fears that Philip Hammond could be on the brink of quitting as Chancellor because of the mounting Cabinet rift over Brexit.
Friends of Mr Hammond claim that he has been deliberately excluded from key No10 meetings because of his outspoken criticism of Ministers who back the ‘hard’ Brexit option of the UK leaving the single market.
They fear that, at the age of 60, he will walk out of the Government rather than stifle his opposition. Last night, a Treasury spokesman insisted that Mr Hammond would not ‘throw his toys out of the pram’ and was working ‘to bring everyone together’.
The fears come as Theresa May faces a hostile reception on Thursday at her first European Council in Brussels where she will hold informal talks on her Brexit strategy with other EU leaders.
Meanwhile The Mail on Sunday has learned that Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg are poised to mount a cross-party bid to force an imminent Commons showdown on the Brussels negotiations. The former party leaders will join proRemain Tory MPs to table a motion within weeks calling on the Government to publish a Brexit plan, which would require Commons approval before Mrs May could trigger the Article 50 withdrawal process.
THE crisis of Brexit may be only just starting. Those who thought the vote last June was the end of the matter are rapidly learning that it was in fact only the beginning.
It is odd that those who campaigned for British sovereignty as a supreme objective should now seem reluctant to involve Parliament in the process. And it is odder still that many of them still maintain a blind faith that departure from the EU will be nothing but sunlit uplands, unclouded by storms.
There needs to be a new sense of reasonableness in the debate about how we proceed. There is no point in the winning side denying that there is any economic cost to leaving, especially if we forgo access to the single market.
Yet the Government’s position on this is still unclear as we head rapidly towards the moment of no return. These are difficult and complicated times, and the Prime Minister needs to act cautiously and keep an open mind if she is to pilot the country safely through them.