Philip hammond

What are now called ‘fiscal events’—the Budget and the Autumn Statement—have become the biggest dates in the Westminster calendar. The Chancellor lights up the landscape with political pyrotechnics. There are attempts to bribe prospective voters through tax and spending changes, a litany of pork-barrel projects designed to help individual MPs, and fiendishly complicated schemes no one expects. But with the Treasury under new management, this will all change on Wednesday. Philip Hammond is the least political Chancellor Britain has had for quite some time. The two longest-serving incumbents of recent times, George Osborne and Gordon Brown, doubled up as electoral strategists whose fiscal policies were informed, above all, by political

The City and Westminster are waiting to see what Philip Hammond does in the autumn statement next month. I write in The Sun this morning, that they are looking to see what the new Chancellor’s strategy is for guiding the economy through the uncertainty that will exist until we know what the Brexit deal is. In a private meeting with Tory MPs this week, Hammond gave some indications as to what he plans to do on November 23rd. He was clear that it won’t be a give-away statement. He warned that the deficit remains ‘eye wateringly large’, that the debt to GDP ratio is getting close to the level at

Will Mark Carney go or stay? On appointment in 2013, he indicated he would leave the Bank of England and return to Canada in 2018 (‘We’ll be back in five,’ his wife tweeted), but he has an option to stay a further three years. Theresa May’s criticism of QE in her conference speech was interpreted as an attack, but she and Philip Hammond have subsequently been described as ‘supportive’. Admirers say continuity would be a good thing through the pre-Brexit period, especially if inflation picks up, while detractors such as Nigel Lawson (‘He’s behaved disgracefully’) long to see the back of him. But there’s no big vacancy for him to

Even by the accelerated standards of modern politics, this is fast. Three months after the Chancellor was appointed, the Treasury has had to deny that he has threatened to resign. No. 10, for its part, has had to declare that the Prime Minister has ‘full confidence’ in Philip Hammond. It is telling that neither felt that they could just laugh off the reports. So what is going on? The most innocent explanation is that Westminster is still adjusting to the return of normal relations between Downing Street and the Treasury. David Cameron and George Osborne did everything but actually merge the two. Indeed, until the coalition came along, they planned

98 days into the Theresa May government and Philip Hammond is the Cabinet Minister under the most scrutiny. The reports of tensions both between him and the Cabinet’s Brexit Ministers, and him and Number 10, mean that his words are parsed particularly carefully. In front of the Treasury select committee today, Hammond refused to say whether or not he had seen the section of Theresa May’s conference speech that criticised the effects of the Bank of England’s monetary policy. This was effectively an admission that he had not. Given that one well-placed insider told me that May’s comments produced ‘serious trouble’ between her and Hammond this is not that surprising.

Philip Hammond’s speech has had a mixed reaction from his MP colleagues, it is fair to say. A number have run up to me and rolled their eyes at how terrible his jokes were, or at his skill in managing to make one of the most important jobs in government sound boring, even telling delegates at one point not to switch off before talking about the very interesting productivity puzzle. One minister mutters that the speech was ‘classic Hammond’, which was more of a reference to his lack of charisma than his rather downbeat assessment of everything, from how interesting his job is to the consequences of Brexit. It was

Hinkley Point — for all its flaws and the whiffs of suspicion around its Chinese investors — has finally received Downing Street’s blessing. Meanwhile, ministers hold the party line that High Speed 2 will go ahead according to plan, backed by news that the project has already bought £2 billion worth of land; and investors hunt for shares in the construction sector that might benefit from the multi-billion-pound infrastructure spree widely expected in Chancellor Philip Hammond’s autumn statement. But still no decision on a new airport runway for London — the one piece of digger work, short of tunnelling under the Atlantic, that would signal Britain’s raging post-Brexit appetite for

On Thursday, the Cabinet’s Economic and Industrial Strategy committee met. There were, as I write in The Sun this morning, controversial issues on the agenda: new rules on foreign takeovers of British companies, executive pay and workers on boards. May made clear her views on these questions in the last speech of her leadership campaign. But in this meeting, the members of the committee didn’t simply echo May’s views back at her. One of those present tells me that Philip Hammond made a ‘fearless’ intervention setting out his own, distinct take on these questions. Hammond was then supported by several Cabinet colleagues. It was emphasised that in the context of

So, where are we at on Brexit? Well, we know that Theresa May wants immigration control as part of the deal which essentially rules out a Swiss or Norwegian style deal. But, as I report in The Sun, beyond that little is settled. As one Cabinet Minister said to me after the away day at Chequers this week, ‘The truth is that, at the moment, we’re still in the preparatory stage’. Cabinet Ministers were struck by how open the discussion was at Chequers. Unlike in the Cameron era, there was no early indication as to what the Prime Minister wanted the meeting to conclude. According to those present, one of

It’s strange that, even now, the Brexit vote is routinely referred to as an expression of anger or frustration — as if the most easily baffled half of the population had voted in response to forces they could not understand. In fact, the result of the 23 June referendum seems to look wiser with every week that has passed. Of course, leaving has its risks. But 52 per cent of voters judged that a greater one lay in staying in a European Union that is changing all the time — and invariably for the worse. The British vision of the world — of free trade, friendly competition and respect for

In the runup to the referendum, we heard repeated warnings that, whatever the outcome of the actual vote, the damage to the UK economy had been done. The Bank of England, whose governor has been accused of becoming something of a fellow traveller for Project Fear, warned in its Monetary Policy Committee meeting in March that: ‘There appears to be increased uncertainty surrounding the forthcoming referendum on UK membership of the European Union’. In April, the BoE was at it again, downgrading second-quarter growth from 0.5 per cent to 0.3 per cent. Warnings such as these risk of being self-fulfilling: if you talk about uncertainty, it’s hardly surprising that investors feel uncertain, creating a

Since Theresa May succeeded David Cameron as Prime Minister, she has wasted no time in putting distance between herself and many of Cameron’s flagship policies. As well as putting the brakes on Hinkley Point, May has hinted that she will take a fresh approach to the Northern Powerhouse and grammar schools. Now Mr S understands that another aspect of the Cameron and Osborne premiership is facing the axe. During Cameron’s time in government, both he and Osborne became known for their penchant for hard-hats and high-vis jackets. In fact, Osborne wore the items for so many industrial visits that he even became known as the ‘hard-hat chancellor’. However, while the duo no doubt thought that the kit gave