Philip Hammond creates a one-man Cabinet split over Brexit

Leaving Philip Hammond in charge of the government was always going to be a risk because of his habit of putting his foot in it. There was the debacle of his first budget, then his saying in Cabinet that driving a train was so easy that even a woman could do it, and his comments that public sector workers are “overpaid”. Now, with the Prime Minister walking in the Alps, Hammond is in charge and has goofed again – this time in an interview with Le Monde.

“I often hear it said that the UK is considering participating in unfair competition in regulation and tax. That is neither our plan nor our vision for the future. The amount of tax we raise as a percentage of our GDP puts us right in the middle of the pack. We don’t want that to change, even after we’ve left the EU. I would expect us to remain a country with a social, economic and cultural model that is recognisably European.”