Treasury questions: knives out for George Osborne over Brexit

As expected, there was one topic which dominated Treasury Questions today and that was the EU. The Chancellor did his best to hold his nerve as he faced strong opposition — in the shape of MPs in his own party.

It’s a rare occasion when George Osborne is able to find more support in the Labour benches than his own but that’s what happened today as Tory MP after Tory MP went into attack mode over the government’s handling of the EU referendum. Andrew Tyrie, the chair of the Treasury Committee, gave the criticisms an air of authority as he kicked things off by calling Osborne out on the use of Article 50 — which spells two years of negotiations after an initial no vote under the Lisbon treaty, which covers a country leaving the EU.

He asked why the government doesn’t give more time between a no vote and Article 50 to see the extent to which good faith can be established with the countries of the European union, adding that it was ‘illogical’ to restrict ourselves:

Osborne snapped back that it was not ‘illogical’ as the only mechanism for leaving the EU is to trigger Article 50 — he then managed to take a pop at Boris Johnson’s notion of two referendums:

‘People need to be aware there aren’t going to be two referendums.