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.