Philip Hammond: caution and wariness as Brexit edges closer
Philip Hammond is addressing business people tonight. A friend said he rather expected the cheers and gasps would happen in the very opposite places where they had in the conference hall for his speech today. For a lifelong Conservative, that’s a slightly alarming state of affairs.
Today Mr Hammond did his level best to pull the argument back towards caution and wariness as Britain approaches the Article 50 moment and the start of negotiations. He was followed by more euphoria as Liam Fox spoke to activists later in the day, but he clearly feels he’s done his bit. As one ally said, if things go wrong as they all too easily could, the Treasury must remain above the politics and be the department that warned coolly of the dangers ahead.
In his speech and in morning interviews Mr Hammond warned of turbulence, a rollercoaster, a long and scary process of negotiations. He didn’t completely spell out that the extra measures, ducking out of the Osborne Surplus Rule and borrowing to invest in infrastructure, were due to Brexit but that’s why they’re happening.
Outside the hall, John Redwood was one of many saying that the Chancellor had been infected with Treasury gloom but that the gloom had already been disproved by events. He should cheer up.
The deal that No. 10 seems to be aiming for is to break down the Single Market advantages that currently help all sorts of UK sectors into a series of near identical separate sector by sector trade arrangements. These separate deals, some broken right down to sub-sectors would not be subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice but in all other ways would grant the freedoms from tariff and non-tariff barriers as closely as possible to the current arrangements.
Why would Europe grant such deals?
One Cabinet minister I spoke to acknowledged that it wouldn’t be easy and much would depend on the mood in Europe at the time. “We need them to be confident, confident that the European project isn’t falling apart,” the minister said. The accompaniment to the talks, elections in the Netherlands, France and Germany and a referendum in Italy, might make that even more difficult than it looks.