Philip Hammond says Britain will get a deal with the EU. But what sort of deal?

There were no announcements in Philip Hammond’s speech to the Tory party conference. He used a chunk of it to contrast the Conservatives with Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, telling the members listening that the Conservatives would this week ‘show the British people what a real party of government looks like’.

But what was more interesting was what he didn’t mention in his speech, particularly in the passage on Europe. Hammond did say that Europe is ‘seriously in need of reform’. And he did say that ‘reform is possible’. But his list of what Britain would say no to as part of that reform didn’t include some of the things that Tories have talked about for a while. He said Britain would say ‘no to abuse of our welfare system’, which is rather different to ‘no to paying in-work benefits immediately to EU migrants’, for instance. Or ‘no to freedom of movement to look for work, rather than freedom of movement with a job’.