Fraser Nelson

Even Damian Green seems to find it odd that he’s the second most important person in the government. When asked, the First Secretary of State plays down his influence — in fact, he plays down most things. When David Cameron wanted the Tories’ immigration policies out of the spotlight, he put Green in charge of them. And when Theresa May wanted someone she could trust to be her deputy after the disastrous general election, she chose one of the few people in the cabinet whom she can call a friend. The pair have known each other since Oxford, and now talk face-to-face every day. When we meet in his magisterial cabinet office headquarters, he talks about her with enthusiasm.

In my Daily Telegraph column yesterday, I asked where Boris Johnson had gone. We never hear from him now, I said, unless there’s been some tragedy overseas or some risqué joke backfiring in Bratislava. Since becoming Foreign Secretary, the most gifted communicator in the Tory party had been mute – a baffling waste of talent. While he sulked, Brexit was being defined by its enemies. The narrative has become one of tedious negotiations and no one in government seemed able (or even interested) in saying what the point of Brexit was. Boris helped inspired a nation to vote for Brexit, and gave a wonderful, liberal and globally-minded definition of it – a very different version to that offered by Nigel Farage with his despicable posters.

For months, Labour has been moving ever closer to the Tory position on Brexit while pretending that it isn’t. First, it backed Brexit. Then in June, John McDonnell told Robert Peston that he couldn’t see continued membership of the single market being 'on the table' in Brexit negotiations. He added that people would interpret membership of the single market as 'not respecting that referendum.' In July, Jeremy Corbyn told Andrew Marr that single market membership is 'dependent on membership of the EU.' Barry Gardiner has even suggested that the UK would become a 'vassal state' if it were to remain in the single market after Brexit.

John Bercow’s decision to allow MPs in the House of Commons to dispense with ties has been hailed by some as a great liberation, and by others as an insult to tradition cast by a man who ought to be wearing a wig. But Tina Stowell, who joined the government as a secretary and ended up Leader of the House of Lords, has a different view: that ties (and, indeed, standard dress code) are a social leveller. She writes on her blog:- 'As someone without a degree who travelled a long path myself, I can see now that one of the most insidious ways those of us in powerful positions have diminished opportunities for non-graduates over the last 20 years is by undermining the importance of some standards hard-working people of all backgrounds used to share….

Leaving Philip Hammond in charge of the government was always going to be a risk because of his habit of putting his foot in it. There was the debacle of his first budget, then his saying in Cabinet that driving a train was so easy that even a woman could do it, and his comments that public sector workers are “overpaid”. Now, with the Prime Minister walking in the Alps, Hammond is in charge and has goofed again – this time in an interview with Le Monde. “I often hear it said that the UK is considering participating in unfair competition in regulation and tax. That is neither our plan nor our vision for the future. The amount of tax we raise as a percentage of our GDP puts us right in the middle of the pack.

I was on the radio this morning with David Mellor who accused the Cabinet of being appallingly ill-disciplined because of 'leaks' in the weekend press. James Forsyth revealed on Saturday that Philip Hammond had told Cabinet that being a train driver is so easy that 'even' a woman could do it. Yesterday, Tim Shipman revealed in the Sunday Times that Hammond had gone on to declare that public sector workers were 'overpaid'. But here's the thing: that meeting took place on Tuesday. If Cabinet members were queuing up to leak to journalists then we'd have read about it in Wednesday's newspapers.

It was The Spectator’s summer party last night, the high point of Westminster’s social calendar. We had the Prime Minister, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary - and Lady Nugee (aka Emily Thornberry) apparently walking away in a fury when told her friend could not come in just because he had a peerage. We had a High Life bar, in honour of Taki, and a Low Life one, named for Jeremy Clarke. But the stars were a group of young people from the Social Mobility Foundation, and I thought I’d say a little more about them. We at The Spectator have worked with the SMF for years. Typically, they are straight-A students from disadvantaged backgrounds: bright, hard-working and hugely appreciative of advice and opportunities.

The Empire for International Development has a tough job justifying its deeply unpopular budget. In recent years, it has made out that development aid will stem the flow of migration. The following line appears in a piece that Priti Patel, the DFID Secretary, writes for the Sunday Telegraph today. We are taking immediate steps to protect our borders and tackle people smuggling. But the only way to resolve this crisis in the long term is to address the root causes. We need to create jobs across Africa and provide its growing population with a route out of poverty where they are. Her overall point - about how Africa needs more capitalism - is brave and correct. But this idea about development quelling immigration is the opposite of the truth.

We host a lot of events at The Spectator but we've just held our favourite: the readers' tea party. About 200 subscribers come to the back garden for tea and cakes to meet our writers, our editors and each other. T-Sticks supplied the tea, H. Forman & Son the food and Taki brought along a bottle of Lagavulin for those in the mood for something stronger. The thrill, for us in 22 Old Queen St, is meeting the people that we spend our working lives thinking about. It's difficult to imagine a typical Spectator reader because they don't really exist: this afternoon, for example, I met a policeman, a mathematician, a specialist in Chinese antiquities, a joiner and and a taxi driver.

This morning, The Spectator held a series of discussions about the future of Conservative welfare reform, chaired by Andrew Neil and made possible by the sponsorship of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. It was a sell-out invent with a stellar panel, and we’ll bring you the full reports later. But I thought it worth mentioning what our keynote speaker, Iain Duncan Smith, had to say about tower blocks and the work capability assessments made notorious in the film I, Daniel Blake. There are 4,000 tower blocks in Britain which the former Work & Pensions Secretary says represent an "architect-led" planning mistake. "Tower blocks, by and large, are not part of the housing culture of the United Kingdom.