Brexit

There have been two meetings of the Brexit inner Cabinet this week. But as I say in The Sun this week, the government is still making its way towards a detailed, negotiating position. Indeed, in one of the meetings this week, Theresa May emphasised that the ministers didn’t need to come to a decision that day. That may have led to a more constructive conversation. But as Jeremy Heywood delicately pointed out, taking these decisions won’t get easier with time. With the crunch EU council meeting next month, the UK doesn’t have much more time either. The longer the UK waits, the harder it will be to build diplomatic support for its preferred solutions. The Brexit inner Cabinet remains divided on the best way ahead.

After PMQs today, Theresa May will rush back to Downing Street to chair a meeting of the Brexit inner Cabinet. This meeting will take place against a backdrop of heightened Tory infighting over Europe. This isn’t being caused by the Cabinet, who have been fairly well behaved in recent days, but the backbenches. May’s problem is that both wings of the Tory party think that her policy is, to a certain extent, equidistant between them. So, whenever one side ratchets up the rhetoric, the other feels obliged to follow suit. Since Jacob Rees-Mogg took over as chair of the European Research Group, the main Brexiteer group in the Tory party, it has taken a far more confrontational approach to the government.

Amber Rudd: ‘I have complete confidence’ in the civil service The Home Secretary has defended the civil service after recent comments made by members of her party. Brexit minister Steve Baker and backbencher Jacob Rees-Mogg – now the chair of the influential European Research Group – have both criticised the institution. Baker apologised to the House of Commons on Friday for suggesting that there was significant internal pressure from civil servants to stay in the EU customs union, while Rees-Mogg accused officials who drew up a post-Brexit economic analysis of ‘fiddling the figures’.

At political Cabinet this week, the chief whip warned ministers how difficult it was to hold the Tory party together, I write in The Sun this morning. Julian Smith warned them that noises off from the Cabinet made it even more of a struggle to maintain unity. Smith is right. The Tory party is dangerously divided, a split is a real possibility. He’s also right that ministers sounding off over Brexit heighten these tensions. But what he didn’t mention is the most important thing, the need for leadership. Ministers are putting forward their views on Brexit so publicly because there isn’t a clear government position. They think everything is still to play for, so a bit of public lobbying is justified.

The management principle that in static organisations, people are promoted to their level of incompetence reveals the government’s two most inept politicians to be the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Appearing at Davos last week, Philip Hammond pitched the government into its current – conceivably terminal – Brexit crisis. Thanks to his intervention, the Chancellor’s game plan is now obvious: the softest possible Brexit. Getting away with it involves a softly, softly approach. The politics of being outside the EU but ruled by the EU as a de facto Brussels protectorate require copious doses of political Temazepam. This, one would have thought, would have come naturally to Philip Hammond.