Portrait of the Week – 10 May 2018

Home

Although the world was led to believe that, thanks to the vote of Sajid Javid, the new Home Secretary, the idea of a ‘customs partnership’ with the EU had been killed by six to five in the cabinet Brexit sub-committee, the corpse was revivified by Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, on the Andrew Marr Show, where he suggested that 3,500 Toyota jobs were at risk. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leader of the pro-Brexit European Research Group, said: ‘The customs partnership is in a sense misnamed because it means single market as well as customs union and therefore we would not in effect be leaving the European Union.’ Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary, was accused of differing from Theresa May, the Prime Minister, when he said: ‘If you have a new customs partnership, you have a crazy system whereby you end up collecting tariffs on behalf of the EU at the UK frontier.’