James Forsyth James Forsyth

It’s Brexit business as usual

The cabinet’s trip to Chequers next month will be a tense affair. Things always are when Brexit is the only item on the agenda.

This week’s cabinet meeting, convened to discuss the new NHS funding settlement, offered a preview of some of the arguments to come. Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, and David Gauke, a Treasury man now installed as Lord Chancellor, argued that the public finances need a soft Brexit. Intriguingly, no one pushed back against that point.

In part, this was because Boris Johnson — the most bullish of the cabinet Brexiteers — was not there. One senior Downing Street source tells me that the silence of the other Brexiteers shows that, ‘Not many of the other leavers are as blasé as he is about disruption. They understand the fiscal arithmetic that if we take a hit to growth, it becomes very difficult to find more money for defence and everything else.’

Johnson is in combative mood, however. He believes there is an urgent need for a last-ditch effort to change the government’s whole approach to the negotiations. He has told friends that he fears that Britain is going to end up ‘not in Europe but run by Europe’.

The Foreign Secretary had hoped to enlist Michael Gove in this effort to push for a change of approach. Despite their spectacular falling out over the Tory leadership, the pair have — at times — coordinated on Brexit since Gove’s return to the cabinet. They met at a mutual friend’s London townhouse to discuss the issue at the beginning of this month. But the discussion ended up highlighting how far apart the two men are on tactics. Gove feels that a radically more robust negotiating strategy would require a credible threat of no deal.

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