When governments fall it often comes from an unexpected quarter. Thirty eight years ago, James Callaghan’s government fell not as a direct result of the Winter of Discontent but from the fallout over a failed referendum on Scottish devolution. Over the past week we have heard plenty of speculation about Theresa May losing her job thanks to her cough at Manchester or through Brexit-induced civil war in her cabinet. But could we be missing something more obscure but at the same time more ominous?
The more I think about it, the gravest danger to the government comes not from its handling of Brexit, universal credit, inflation or any of the other stories which have dominated the news agenda in the past month. It comes from the decision by the US government, at Boeing’s behest, to slap tariffs on imports of planes built by Canadian manufacturer Bombardier. First it was a tariff of 220 per cent.
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