Philip Hammond is “ out of the closet now as a defiant cabinet champion of a soft Brexit”, says Ben Chu in The Independent. In the annual Mansion House speech, the chancellor of the exchequer called for “a comprehensive agreement on trade in goods and services, transitional arrangements to avoid any ‘cliff-edge’ collapse, frictionless customs arrangements extending to the Irish land border, and continued migration of selected groups of workers from and to the EU”.
Such an approach is a “practical improvement on the government’s unrealistic pre-election guff about Brexit”, says The Guardian – and that suggests that “weakened” prime minister Theresa May “is being pushed into a more liberal deal than the one she wanted”.
Don’t read too much into Hammond’s words, says Sebastian Payne in the Financial Times. While the chancellor clearly believes in a “soft Brexit”, he “stuck to May’s programme, albeit with a plea for a very gradual transition”, and emphasised that he was seeking a transitional period only “until new long-term arrangements are up and running”. That sounds like a “hard Brexit with a soft landing”.
However, it’s not just Hammond who could push May in a softer direction, says Rachel Sylvester in The Times. “The balance of power in her cabinet has shifted since the election at the same time as her own authority has waned.” Damian Green, her deputy in all but name, is one of the Tories’ strongest pro-Europeans. Expect him to “do all he can to minimise the economic fallout of Brexit”.