Blundering Chancellor Philip Hammond keeps making gaffes and has sabotaged Brexit talks
Foul-ups Phil
DOES Philip Hammond have any inkling of the damage he is doing as he lurches ineptly from one gaffe to another?
His boss, the Prime Minister, insists we will thrive whether there’s a Brexit deal or not. The EU has to know that she is unafraid to walk away if need be.
What does her blundering Remainer Chancellor do?
Volunteers his own apocalyptic warning about No Deal reversing our progress since the 2008 crash.
Mr Hammond has leapt on the IMF’s latest doom-laden predictions and swallowed them whole, despite its abysmal forecasting record over the financial crisis, austerity and the Brexit vote.
The Chancellor has already hampered vital No Deal preparations, undermined the new Brexit Secretary and only last week suggested delaying our departure.
Now, at a stroke, he has sabotaged our negotiating hand and boosted the EU’s.
It is a measure of the weakness of Mrs May’s position after the loss of her majority that Mr Hammond is still in his job.
Unicorn U-turn
REMEMBER Brussels mocking the Brexiteers’ idea of high-tech customs checks to solve the Irish border problem?
The technology didn’t exist, they said. It was a “fantasy island unicorn model”.
Triumphant Remoaners piled in. It proved Brexiteers were clueless, they chirped. And Downing Street then produced its convoluted alternative.
Except the EU, in the form of Michel Barnier, now believes in the fantasy island unicorn model too. The trouble being it wants it used between Britain and Northern Ireland instead of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.
And the DUP, whom Theresa May needs for her survival, won’t wear that. Nor should they, since it divides the UK.
Funny though, isn’t it, how Brussels move the goalposts when it suits them? They have negotiated in bad faith all along.
MOST READ IN OPINION
Welcome, Matt
TOO many politicians are in denial about the soaring cost of the NHS and social care. So we applaud Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s imaginative plan to sort the latter.
The new lifelong insurance system he is considering, compulsory for all workers unless they take a risk and opt out, looks a practical idea to fund part or all of an OAP’s care costs.
It would give them peace of mind that they wouldn’t have to spend their savings or the proceeds from their home.
Maybe it will work. Maybe not. Regardless, it is to Mr Hancock’s credit that he is starting a grown-up conversation at last over future funding of health.
For too long progress has been stymied by the Left using any change to the NHS as a political weapon.
But the structure of a health service designed in 1948 now needs a radical rethink.
It is time reality dawned.