Alex Massie

I’m afraid that try as I might, I cannot be excited by Philip Hammond’s budget any more than he seemed excited to deliver it. How could it be otherwise when this is, in almost every respect, a make-up and make-do budget that is, in any case, held hostage to fortune? For understandable reasons, the Treasury prefers not to talk about Brexit. More than any other government department, it considers Brexit a lamentable episode of self-harm. At best, gains on the swings will be forfeited on the roundabouts and the Treasury is not inclined to believe that the best of all possible worlds is actually anything like the most probable kind of world. Brexit is mentioned just three times in the Red Book. The OBR, by contrast, is happy to wade into these murky waters.

In a dismally competitive field, you might think Tory MP Andrew Bridgen must be the short-priced favourite for the next edition of the Deluded Brexiteer stakes. This newly-established classic always attracts a large field and the MP for North West Leicestershire’s suggestion that he, an Englishman, has the right to pop over to the Republic of Ireland and demand, and expect to be granted, an Irish passport shows that Mr Bridgen is in fine, early-season, form. He is tough to beat. And yet his success cannot be taken for granted. This is a wide-open race. Consider, for instance, the credentials of Andrea Jenkyns.

A week after the Labour party conference made the best available case for Theresa May’s government, it is the Conservative’s turn to persuade the country that a Labour government, compared to the alternatives available, might not be such a complete disaster after all. Such is the way of party conferences these days. And it cannot be said that the Conservative gathering in Birmingham has got off to a great start. Indeed, all the signs are that this is a party experiencing a nervous breakdown. It looks at the Labour party - a party which, tellingly, welcomed back Derek Hatton last week - and wonders why on earth it isn’t pummelling the hell out of these Trots and Sparts. Something, somewhere, has gone very badly wrong. The answer, as so often, lies within.

Conference season always shows our political parties at their worst. It would be a kindness if these things were not televised. These dungeons cannot withstand the intrusion of too much daylight. On the other hand, some things are evident. Chiefly, it is now beyond clear that Brexit has broken both parties. More than that, it has overwhelmed a hopelessly overmatched political class that plainly lacks the ability to make sense of the Brexit fiasco and, just as pertinently, the courage to look reality in the face. This government - this hopeless government, I should say - is kept alive by only one thing: the impossibility of the opposition. In turn, this opposition is given hope by only one thing: the clattering uselessness of this government.

I am relaxed about Jeremy Corbyn being thicker than mince but draw the line at the assumption, all too evidently held by most of his most devoted supporters, that you must be too. If Corbyn wishes to deny the obvious that is his prerogative; the notion you should be prepared to swallow any and every piece of whitewashing nonsense peddled by his fans is quite a different matter.  “I was present” when the wreath was laid “but I don’t think I was involved in it” is, I suppose, a step forward from the Labour party’s previous suggestion that “The Munich widows are being misled. Jeremy did not honour those responsible for the Munich killings”.

Not the least extraordinary thing about the campaign to leave the European Union is that it turns out no-one was in charge of it. Things just happened and decisions were just made without the oversight or knowledge of the most senior politicians whose support for the project was reckoned, with some reason, to be crucial to its essential success.  If Boris Johnson gave the Leave campaign a popular - and populist - presence in the nation’s television studios, Michael Gove gave it a certain intellectual credibility amongst the - admittedly small - percentage of the electorate that worries about such things. And with good reason: Gove’s intelligence, if not always his judgement, has never been in doubt.

Something rather remarkable happened yesterday: Theresa May had a good day. This counts as news and is itself testament to the miserable time she has endured since she became Prime Minister. Some of this – much of it, in fact – was her own fault. Or at least her own responsibility. If she had called an election in September 2016 it seems likely she would have been rewarded with a handsome majority and, just as usefully, a thumping mandate for her own interpretation of Brexit. Delaying until June 2017, however, meant she missed her chance. By that stage the moment had passed. The election became another unwanted imposition.

The good news, one Tory conceded to me today, is that there is a measure of clarity now. Open warfare has replaced the clandestine skirmishing that has hitherto occupied the attention of the cabinet and the Conservative parliamentary party. You are either with the prime minister, for all her faults and shortcomings, or you are against her. This is a choosing time and there is no hiding place.  As good news goes, this doesn’t go very far.  Nevertheless, this is where we are. Ever since her Lancaster House speech - the foundational document of her tenure in office - the prime minister has stressed that she sought a Brexit deal that offered as much access to the single market as possible.

Greater love, as wags responded to Harold Macmillan’s “night of the long knives” reshuffle, hath no man than that he lay down his friends for his political life. Well, Nicola Sturgeon’s political life is not threatened just yet but, even so, there was a whiff of this as she reshuffled her cabinet this week. If it wasn’t quite a night of long knives, it was certainly an afternoon of wee dirks.  The headline was the departure of Shona Robison, the health secretary, and one of the first minister’s closest political friends. Labour and the Liberal Democrats have repeatedly called for Robison’s resignation; yesterday they were given their prize.

Brexit must happen. Of course it must, for the people have decreed it should and, in this instance, their command cannot, as it can be in other circumstances, be countermanded. That leaves ample room for argument over the precise shape of Brexit – for it turns out there are many kinds of Brexit – but the essence of the matter is clear: Brexit must mean Brexit. It is possible to be sanguine about this and to recognise that even as the net impact of Brexit is likely to be negative in an economic sense, some sectors of the economy may benefit from it. In many areas, there is undoubtedly an opportunity to do some things differently and, who knows and with some luck, perhaps even do them better. The sky may darken; it should not fall.

Of course it was a “stunt” - the Westminster village’s preferred term for any piece of nonsense that disrupts the serenity of the mother of parliaments - and of course it was planned in advance. Pete Wishart, the SNP MP for Perth and North Perthshire, tweeted that prime minister’s questions would be unusually interesting this week.  For a given definition of interesting, that is. The SNP’s walk-out was engineered to win the party some attention and a place at the top of this evening’s Scottish news. Job done. Mission accomplished. Well done lads. It was all very reminiscent of the 1980s when Alex Salmond, among others, was forever making an exhibition of himself the better to win the SNP some - indeed any - attention at all.