Last month, David Davis warned that a Tory leadership contest would be ‘catastrophic’ for the Brexit negotiations. But as the Brexit secretary heads to Brussels for the second instalment of talks, the jostling among MPs to be the next party leader is well underway.
The weekend papers have been filled with Cabinet members briefing against one another and reports of growing tensions (not helped, it’s safe to say, by The Spectator summer party). While leadership rivals Davis and Johnson have been described as ‘a pair of rutting stags locking antlers’, the person receiving the most flak is none other than the Chancellor. After James revealed on Saturday that Philip Hammond had upset his Cabinet colleagues with a sexist comment on female train drivers, the Sunday Times reports that he also poured petrol on the public sector pay cap row – claiming that public sector workers are ‘overpaid’.
In turn, Hammond used his appearance on the Andrew Marr show to hit back publicly – blaming Brexiteers for the briefings:
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