Hard Brexit? Soft Brexit? No, it’s the Right Brexit stupid!

It can’t have been an easy task for the new Chancellor to address an audience in New York consisting of precisely the very “rootless international elite” that his boss Theresa May was just the day before castigating.

The man charged with interviewing Mr Hammond told him the audience of bankers and businessmen had been shocked at the language coming out of the Conservative Party Conference over the past few days. All of which has left them – and almost everyone else– concluding that Britain is headed for a “hard Brexit” – an end to freedom of movement and with it, necessarily, an ousting from the single market. That was the message loud and clear. Yet Mr Hammond appeared to want to soften the tone today. “We don’t recognise this distinction between hard Brexit and soft Brexit,” he told the audience. Instead he came up with a new piece of jargon of his own. “We want the Right Brexit,” he said.

The Right Brexit, according to Mr Hammond, means there will be negotiation and that compromise WILL be reached on both sides, including on freedom of movement.  Yes there’s lots of tough talk now, he said, but over time, some form of agreement was on the cards.

“I’ve never been involved in a negotiation where the end position after two years of negotiating is exactly the same as the starting position, so this is a negotiation,” he said. “We understand the opening position of the European Union.  The European Union understands the opening position of the UK.  Let’s now get engaged in a sensible discussion.”

That’s a very different tone to the Prime Minister, though, who made clear Brexit must mean no freedom of movement. Period. Very little room for negotiation there.

Of course there was an element of the Chancellor clearly trying to tell his audience what they wanted to hear and one source told me his message wasn’t different to the Prime Minister. Yet, unlike her, he was at pains to stress that “It will be one of the UK government’s objectives to ensure that the parts of the financial services sector that are Europe facing are able to continue doing business in Europe.”

But whether or not that is achievable is another issue altogether. Clearly the markets aren’t buying it. Sterling touched another new low today as investors continue to believe that a Hard Brexit is now inevitable and that it will bring pain for the British economy or British businesses.

But it’s not just the international elite that Mr Hammond will have to sell his message to.

There are people in the Cabinet alongside the Chancellor who will not like the sound of “sensible discussions” at all. In fact, they rather like the idea of Hard Brexit meaning just that. Hard Brexit.