How big business failed in its plot to stop Brexit

A little over a year ago, at the nadir of the May administration’s excruciating bungling of Brexit, the Daily Telegraph landed a dynamite exclusive.

The Chancellor, Philip Hammond, and Business Secretary Greg Clark had hosted a confidential conference call for corporate bosses in which they said the threat of a no-deal Brexit was effectively off the table. And the Telegraph had obtained a tape recording of the whole thing.

Behind the backs of the British people, the well-upholstered felines of big business were being told that a huge Commons defeat for May’s withdrawal agreement (it had just lost by 230 votes) did not mean that Brexit would go ahead on WTO terms at the end of March.

Instead, it would simply not happen unless or until a withdrawal agreement had been approved that elevated their blessed supply chains and demands for ongoing frictionless trade above the democratic imperative.

Hammond told the bosses that Article 50 – the mechanism by which we were leaving the EU – could be rescinded.