Sajid Javid. Liz Truss. Dominic Raab, or perhaps even his old City Hall colleague Kit Malthouse. There are plenty of well-qualified candidates to move into the house next door when Boris Johnson becomes prime minister next week. But one thing is surely now certain. The incumbent will have to be removed. In the dying days of a dismal Chancellorship, Philip Hammond seems intent on doing nothing more than stoking the dying embers of Project Fear. At a moment when the country needs a Chancellor working out how to cope with a potentially major economic shock, it is stuck with one paralysed by an irrational fear of what might be around the corner.
Hammond proved that once again today when he latched onto the latest scenario from the Office for Budget Responsibility. He was out on the news again this morning warning of a ‘very significant hit’ to the British economy if we left the EU at the end of October without a deal.
It was hard to believe, however, that he had actually read the report itself.
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