NO discussion on the grubby state of politics today would be complete without a quote from Marx.
PA
Not Karl Marx, father of communism, but Groucho Marx, father of satirical one-liners.
He summed up the way too many politicians think when he declared: “Those are my principles and if you don’t like them... well, I have others.”
Few people who have climbed the slippery pole of politics are more adept at facing two ways at once than the man who unfortunately occupies the second-highest office in the land, Chancellor Philip Hammond
Business guru John Longworth calls him “Flip-Flop Phil” for changing his mind on key issues concerning the EU and the economy and demands he be sacked because of the damaging effect his anti-Brexit attitude is having.
There is only one thing on which Hammond’s mind is firmly made up.
He will never be shifted from his conviction that the EU is the greatest thing since sliced bread and that leaving will cause Britain to self-destruct.
He will never flip-flop on his adulation of the European project, however undemocratic and inward-looking it is.
He is an arch Remainer in a Cabinet that is tasked with making sure that Leave means Leave.
Seldom has there been a more glaring example of the wrong man being in the wrong job at the wrong time.
As Longworth rightly says, at this crucially important time – when we need grit and determination to build a new Jerusalem away from the clutches of the arthritic EU – we are stuck with a Chancellor who desires the opposite of what most of the country wants.
Hammond pays lip service to the views expressed by 17.4million voters in the referendum but in his heart he believes they didn’t know what they were doing.
So therefore it is entirely proper – indeed, his duty – to ignore their wishes and construct a dodgy deal with Brussels that will see us leave the EU in name only.
A careful analysis of his pronouncements on Brexit makes this very clear.
Although some of his words are impenetrably turgid – one Cabinet colleague says Hammond “argues like an accountant seeing the risk of everything” – the flip-flops shine through.
Even his basic stance immediately after the referendum rang alarm bells.
Having backed Remain and lost, he floated a smokescreen by saying, “No ifs, no buts, no second referendums. We are leaving the European Union.”
With Hammond there is always a but.
So in the next breath he declared: “But it is equally clear to me that the British people did not vote on June 23 to become poorer, or less secure.”
He is right of course – we voted to become independent, sovereign and free.
Most of us accepted there might be short-term pain but we knew that if the Government put its heart and soul into it, Brexit would transform this country and be the spark that ignited a golden future.
Hammond’s trouble is that like his predecessor, George Osborne, he has no soul.
At every turn everything is painted black in the hope that Brexit can be undermined and if not reversed, then at least watered down to the point where it will be like political homeopathy – one part innovation to a million parts stagnation.
Hammond has vowed he will take whatever steps are necessary to protect the economy, jobs and living standards.
By that he means change nothing, kow-tow to the EU, keep taxing us more and more.
One of the greatest opportunities Brexit presents is to regain control of our economy.
Freed from the diktats of the socialist superstate across the Channel we can stimulate growth and foreign investment by cutting taxes and scrapping red tape to entice wealth creators.
By competing with high-tax, high-regulation Europe we can make Britain an even greater place to do business.
You would be excused for thinking that approach would be music to a Chancellor’s ears.
At the start of the year he certainly gave that distinct impression in an interview with a German newspaper.
His gung-ho approach to competing and trading with the world was refreshing; he even went so far as to say: “You can be sure we will do whatever we have to do. The British people are not going to lie down... we will change our model, and we will come back and we will be competitively engaged.”
It was all nonsense, of course. Last month Flip-Flop Phil assured a French paper that Britain will not become a Singapore-style tax haven.
He would not be cutting corporation tax nor tearing up business regulations.
He said: “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.”
To which the only question can be: Why the hell not?
Hammond’s answer is telling: “I would expect us to remain a country with a social, economic and cultural model that is recognisably European.”
What the country voted for was a social, economic and cultural model that was recognisably British.
If Hammond is too arrogant to understand that then the Prime Minister must replace him right away with someone who does get it – before Hammond does any more damage to our prospects.
Groucho Marx had another saying that perfectly sums up Hammond’s situation: “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying the wrong remedies.”
He has to go. Soon.
http://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/837218/Brexit-Britain-needs-chancellor-Philip-Hammond-who-believes-Chris-Roycroft-Davis
