How did Hammond switch from eurosceptic to Brexit saboteur?

What’s going on with Philip Hammond? The Chancellor is all over the shop. Just days after being accused of sabotaging Brexit with his pessimism, Hammond is hitting back by describing Europe as the ‘enemy.’ The Lady doth protest too much, methinks.

Trying to work out what the Chancellor does think about the EU is turning out to be the most ridiculous mind-game. Some say that he doesn’t have any strong beliefs, that he flies with the wind or the mood of the moment.

So it would seem. Consider this. When Hammond was appointed Foreign Secretary in July 2014, he was hailed as the most Eurosceptic politician to hold that great office of state for decades. Hammond first showed his Eurosceptic colours publicly when, as Defence Secretary in May 2013, he said on the BBC’s Radio5Live Pienaar politics show : “If the choice is between a European Union written exactly as it is today, and not being a part of that, then I have to say that I’m on the side of the argument that Michael Gove has put forward.” Earlier, Gove had been the first Cabinet minister to come out publicly saying he would back Britain’s exit from the EU if David Cameron was unable to bring powers back from Brussels.

Hours after his appointment to the Foreign Office, Hammond was equally insistent on wanting a deal that “protects Britain’s interests” ahead of a proposed referendum in 2017. He told the BBC News: “I’m going to focus on making sure we get a successful renegotiation. I don’t think the way to enter a negotiation is to start issuing threats.”

More pertinently perhaps, he retorted: “It won’t be the politicians in smoke-filled rooms who decide whether the deal is the right one, it will be the British people.” And so they did.

He went further. On Sunday, July 22, just a few days after his promotion, Hammond could not have made himself clearer about the consequences of the failure of the rest of the EU to make meaningful concessions in renegotiations. He told the Andrew Marr show that: “What I can tell, and have told my European colleagues, is that if the offer by European partners is nothing, no change, no negotiation, I am pretty clear what the answer of the British people in that referendum is going to be.”

Even though Cameron did not return with a deal that satisfied the majority, Hammond did go on to support the Remain campaign although, according to close friends, it was with the most reluctant tone.

Yet somehow, over the last year since he was made Chancellor by Theresa May, the supposedly Eurosceptic Big Phil Foreign Secretary has become a Brexit saboteur.  A Chancellor whose team has obviously been briefing the more openly Remain leaning press over the last few months with his regular drip feeding of miserable Brexit forecasts.

Finally, the Eeyore Hammond has been outed.  As the Daily Mail put it rather well this week, he has been so “dismal, defeatist, relentlessly negative” about Brexit that he “might just as well run up the white flag to Jean-Claude Juncker and the Brussels bureaucracy.” His comments about the theoretical possibility of no planes flying across the EU was mind-boggling in its foolishness. Or as former Chancellor, Lord Lawson, put it in his not so subtle way: “What he is doing is close to sabotage.”  Some insiders whisper that it may have been Hammond – or Hammond’s men – if not George Osborne, another former Chancellor – who have been behind much of the dark arts briefing against Boris Johnson over his supposed leadership bid. Hammond, if you remember was Osborne’s deputy in opposition, and they are said to remain close.

How has this metamorphosis come about? Has Hammond – as so many Chancellors are – been captured by the europhile Treasury? Has Spreadsheet Phil been told, as officials do so well in their Yes Minister style, what a genius he is? Has he perhaps been given secret papers which show that Brexit will be more of a disaster than any of us can truly imagine?
 If the latter is he case, then we should be told – honestly and straight and with all the gory detail.

Instead, what we have been treated to from Hammond in his best Gothic, undertaker style manner, is misery upon misery about what the future holds and the uncertainty facing business and industry.

There are valid concerns about what might happen when we exit – either with a deal or no deal. Yet what most of the City and business – and more importantly the entrepreneurs who build future businesses – crave more than anything is confidence, optimism and leadership.  As most intelligent people understand, whatever the outcome of these Brexit negotiations, they will be looked back upon as a mere blip in the history of our dealings with Europe.

And who should be delivering that leadership? Well, the Chancellor and the Treasury on1 Horseguards Road would not be a bad place to begin.  Yet it is blatantly obvious that the paradox of Hammond’s persistent pessimism – and his call for a three year transition period for the formal handover to take effect  – is that he is the one creating the very uncertainty that he is warning against. In sport, it’s called an own goal.

The CBI is just as guilty, and spectacularly brilliant at scoring own goals. Once again the CBI chief, Carolyn Fairbairn, was moaning this week about the uncertainty after the latest news that Michel Barnier and David Davis have been unable to reach agreement on the intermediate deal. Of course they are not able to agree yet – and even if they did, they are not going to reveal their hands. Have the CBI bosses ever run a business or done a deal? Or played poker?

You do not give away your hand.  For there is only one hand to play. We are leaving in a couple of years time – finito. Companies and their bosses know that:  and they are still doing deals, and want to do more deals.

If only Hammond, and people like Fairbairn, would stop telling business they are worried, they won’t need to be. Luckily, most of them are ignoring them anyway and getting on with business. A big tech investor I spoke to this week says he reckons that London will not suffer in the slightest from being outside the EU gates. He says it’s still the best and most open place to find academic brains, the science, the research and the money to invest in new start-ups and businesses.  Like most of the tech industry, he was concerned that Brexit would put off the talent flow from the EU.

But now he says those worries have disappeared as tech titans know there are likely to be decent citizen’s rights agreed for future immigration and that not much will change on that front.

That’s the sort of optimism we need to hear from Hammond, if he lasts that is. If Theresa May sacks him – which she should – then she must move swiftly as the autumn Budget is due on November 22. What she – and we – need is a Tigger, not an Eeyore. Someone north of the river Trent would be rather good to show her One Nation, northern powerhouse credentials. ‎Any volunteers?