Philip Hammond offered to back Boris Johnson for the Tory leadership in a desperate attempt to keep his job, it emerged yesterday
Philip Hammond offered to back Boris Johnson for the Tory leadership in a desperate attempt to keep his job, it emerged yesterday.
The Chancellor is reported to have texted his Cabinet rival at 4am on the morning after the election to offer his support when it looked like Theresa May could be forced from office.
Mr Hammond is said to have proposed a deal in which he remained as Chancellor, with David Davis handling Brexit while Mr Johnson could ‘run the shop’.
The proposal was put as Mr Johnson sat with friends digesting the fallout from the disastrous election result in the early hours of June 9.
Mr Johnson told friends: ‘Philip’s just texted me. He’s 100 per cent behind me if I go for it. Clearly he wants to be Chancellor.’
The claim emerged in a new book on Brexit and the election by political journalist Tim Shipman. The book cites a friend of Mr Johnson’s saying he was ‘circumspect’ about the early hours offer from Mr Hammond. An ally of Mr Hammond also confirmed the extraordinary intervention saying the Chancellor initially thought Mr Johnson ‘could be the answer’ if Mrs May decided to quit.
Mr Hammond’s offer was made despite strained relations between the two men who have found themselves on opposite sides of the Brexit debate in Cabinet.
As the leading Remainer in Cabinet, Mr Hammond has clashed repeatedly with Mr Johnson over issues such as the need for a transition deal. The Chancellor has been withering in private about Mr Johnson’s abilities since he returned to government, criticising his ‘lack of interest in detail’.
But at the time of the election he feared he was facing the sack. Mr Hammond was sidelined during the election campaign and subjected to a series of brutal Downing Street briefings. During the campaign Mrs May publicly refused to endorse her Chancellor, and No 10 insiders even ‘role-played’ a Cabinet reshuffle in which he would be sacked.
The Chancellor is reported to have texted his Cabinet rival at 4am on the morning after the election to offer his support when it looked like Theresa May could be forced from office
Desperate to keep his job he appears to have briefly decided to throw in his lot with Mr Johnson, who many Tories believed could become prime minister within hours of the election. One source who discussed the leadership with the Chancellor that morning said he thought Mr Johnson could head a triumvirate in which Mr Davis ‘could run Brexit, (Hammond) could run the economy and Boris could run the shop’.
Mr Hammond is said to have considered himself ‘too grey’ to make his own bid for the top job and saw the proposal as a ‘solution’ to the election debacle. The plan dissolved when it became clear Mrs May was not going to resign, and the two men resumed hostilities soon afterwards.
The new book, serialised in the Sunday Times, also reveals that David Cameron and Sir John Major were among those encouraging Home Secretary Amber Rudd to mount a challenge in the event of Mrs May stepping aside.
Meanwhile, allies of Mr Davis were involved in collecting the names of MPs willing to call for Mrs May to resign. The Brexit Secretary was aware of the plot and did nothing to discourage it.
The revelations expose the fragility of Mrs May’s grip on power with Mr Hammond, Mr Johnson, Miss Rudd and Mr Davis all embroiled in leadership plots in the aftermath of the election.
Treachery of the serpent: QUENTIN LETTS on why we should not be surprised by the laughable plotting of Philip Hammond
Even in the steamiest jungles of Borneo can there be a serpent as slithering, as coiling, as Philip Hammond?
Yesterday it was reported that the Chancellor was on his mobile telephone within hours of the general election result, offering Boris Johnson help should he wish to topple Theresa May.
Hammond loathes Boris. For all we know, Boris hates him right back (and who could blame him?).
Yet in those pre-dawn hours after the election, self-serving Hammond suspected that Boris might become the new PM. Quick! Time to slither and coil! Boris, my DEAR old friend…
Even in the steamiest jungles of Borneo can there be a serpent as slithering, as coiling, as Philip Hammond?
And so he tapped out a little come-hither text message – a 4am, electronic sibilant hiss, a nibble in the ear allegedly assuring Boris he was ‘100 per cent’ behind him if he sought the Tory leadership. Behind him with a flick-knife in hand, yeah.
In some ways we should not be surprised by this laughable plotting. Mr Hammond is the ultimate politician, driven by his own survival. Here, after all, is a man who in Opposition allowed himself to become regarded as a trenchant Eurosceptic. That suited the politics of the time.
Once he was in Cabinet, and once he had to keep matey with pro-Brussels David Cameron, he became a leading member of George Osborne’s ‘Project Fear’ campaign to startle voters into supporting the EU. At Westminster they call this ‘finessing your views’. Ordinary mortals would call it deceit.
In January of this year, Mr Hammond suggested that post-Brexit Britain could become a competitive, low-tax haven for employers. Good idea. It would boost the economy. Good tactics, too – it jolted the Europeans and could have created some leverage in the Brexit negotiations.
In those pre-dawn hours after the election, self-serving Hammond suspected that Boris might become the new PM. Quick! Time to slither and coil! Boris, my DEAR old friend…
But that was when this Chancellor thought Mrs May was going to become more powerful. That was when he was wriggling for his job. Now that she has been weakened by her poor election performance – so weakened that she could not sack Mr Hammond – he has changed his tune and recently said that a lower-tax Britain was ‘neither our plan or our vision’.
Vision! How can so drab and duplicitous a figure talk of ‘vision’? The word suggests something Biblical and uplifting. Not slippery careerism.
You might have thought that, having been made Chancellor by Mrs May, this cadaverous oiler would have shown the lady some loyalty and thanks. Yet this time last year, a few months after finally landing the job he had yearned for so long, he was manoeuvering against Cabinet colleagues and Brexit. His plotting to dilute the EU referendum result has severely weakened not only Mrs May but also Britain’s chances of securing an acceptable deal from the EU.
That would suit Philip Hammond and his Treasury just fine. They could turn round and tell the referendum majority ‘we told you so’. But it would be a betrayal of the country. Mr Hammond often justifies his anti-Brexit position by claiming that ‘the people of Britain did not vote to become poorer’. Actually, they were asked a question which very clearly placed democratic self-control above the convenience of commerce. They chose the former. They chose to get out of the undemocratic EU, not least to control immigration.
Yet Mr Hammond and his Remain co-plotters, from Tony Blair to George Osborne and Miss Scary Spectacles Amber Rudd, think they can tell the voters to get stuffed. Mr Hammond patronisingly claims that ‘literally no one’ wants a fall in immigration from the EU and he wants Britain to remain ‘recognisably European’.
One detail of yesterday’s reports rang a little untrue – the claim that Mr Hammond realises that he is ‘grey’ and therefore accepted that he would have to serve under Boris in an envisaged ‘triumvirate’ with David Davis.
When this Chancellor thought Mrs May was going to become more powerful. That was when he was wriggling for his job
Grey, Hammond most certainly is. But the odd thing about this most prosaic of personalities is his weird vanity. Just look at how he is forever patting the edges of his hairstyle. How he must boil with envy at Boris Johnson’s effortless elan.
Politically, Mr Hammond’s vanity can be seen in his delusional self-regard for his abilities. He really thinks he is the master strategist, the dog’s brisket. But his one Budget to date turned into a fiasco when one of its chief proposals, a change in National Insurance rates for the self-employed, had to be quickly dumped. He had forgotten that this was in conflict with his party’s 2015 election manifesto! Had he only mentioned the National Insurance changes to Mrs May before he gave his Budget, she might have pointed that out to him. But he had kept the PM in the dark, and the voters’ trust in the Tories was damaged at a crucial time.
It is reassuring to read that Boris laughed when he read that 4am text from dullard ‘Spreadsheet Phil’ (his nickname, testament to his computeroid speed at reading financial documents). The Foreign Secretary immediately spotted that Mr Hammond was simply trying to keep his job. A man, in short, who had he been on the Titanic on the night she hit an iceberg would have barged the women and children aside in the rush for the lifeboats, demanding safe passage for himself and his tin of Cossack hairspray.