
No, Philip Hammond’s reselection last night does not protect him from being deselected if he loses the Whip
The Party’s rules – and the history of legal challenges to them – make for grim reading for the former Chancellor.
The Party’s rules – and the history of legal challenges to them – make for grim reading for the former Chancellor.
Shouldn’t local Assocations have the right to select their candidate? It is far from obvious to us that the answer is no.
Gauke, Hammond, Burt and other rebels have little intellectual case for their actions; their moral or political rationale is threadbare.
Oddly there is no line that says ‘we might leave the EU, but only if the process passes tests that Philip Hammond isn’t applying publicly at this stage’.
Plus: I’ve never thought a national unity government is a runner, and I think it’s even less likely now.
“Leaving the EU without a deal would be just as much a betrayal of the referendum result as not leaving at all.”
He suggests that Johnson is acting dishonestly in claiming that he wants a deal. But with all respect to the former Chancellor, he is throwing stones from a glass house.
Perhaps the cost of dying all seems rather small fry, in relation to delivering Brexit by October 31. But there is likely to be a Budget ahead of the deadline.
We concede that this is a question to which the Prime Minister himself may not yet have an answer.
In a nice piece of constitutional give-and-take, a more loyal minister-class makes for a potentially more troublesome set of Tory Select Committee chairmen.
One could sense Labour MPs, and some Tory ones too, grasping that “everything is changing”.
We have the Government that we should have had then, ready to counter the charge that Vote Leave scurried away from Brexit, rather than manning up to deliver it.
We can now see the new Government taking shape, after a dramatic bout of sackings and new appointments at the top.
If Boris Johnson wants to pursue a No Deal exit, then he will have a fight on his hands with MPs.
The new Prime Minister will inherit the worst political legacy in living memory – with the very barest of working majorities.