Hammond beware; leaking ex-ministers should be jailed

During the remainiacs' long campaign of sabotage and attrition from inside government against Brexit, they made full use of an often willing and compliant civil service in creating material to support their Project Fear narrative. Such, we suspect, was the Yellowhammer file, a document that has Hammond's Treasury all over it. Yellowhammer was a scare too far. Sunday's papers reported that even civil service hearts weren't really in it, so absurd and far-fetched were some of the inventions. The May-sanctioned semi-official leakers from Cabinet clearly decided at the time that the thing was just too ludicrous to be credibly leaked.

And so Mr Hammond, it seems, was left with this unused carefully constructed work of semi-fiction. All that creative energy to no end. Until it seems the last few days, when a copy was mysteriously left in a Whitehall pub used by journalists. Mr Hammond has denied that he was responsible, and we must believe him.

However, if Mr Hammond should ever be tempted to leak any other cabinet documents, or material that he is bound both by his privy-council oath and the Official Secrets Act not to disclose, he should be aware that this is not a government inclined to forgiveness, and any such actions could leave him banged up in Belmarsh. 

Plans and Lies - the long betrayal

Back in the early 1970s, prior to the last EEC Referendum in 1975, Britain's ministers and civil servants were fully aware of the loss of democratic power they were signing up to. They were also concerned to hide the truth from the British public. From a secret Foreign Office file - FCO 30/1048 - the truth is even now emerging. Just one single paragraph -

26. To play an effective part in the Community British members of the Commission and their staffs and British officials as negotiators will necessarily assume more political roles than is traditional in the UK. The Community, if we are to benefit to the full, will develop wider powers and co-ordinate and manage policy over wider areas of public business. To control and supervise this process it will be necessary to strengthen the democratic organisation of the Community with the consequent decline of the primacy and prestige of the national Parliaments. The task will not be to arrest this process, since to do so would be to put considerations of formal sovereignty before effective influence and power, but to adapt institutions and policies both in the UK and in Brussels to meet and reduce the real and substantial public anxieties over national identity and alienation from government, fear of change and loss of control over their fate which are aroused by talk of the "loss od sovereignty"

To translate into modern vernacular, 'Unelected officials will assume more power. This is needed to allow the EEC itself to develop new powers in new areas. Power will flow to the Commission and its officials from national democratic Parliaments. We mustn't stop this, for it would hinder the Community's expansion into a Superstate. We have to control the public's reaction to their losing real and democratic power'

They knew. They've always known. And they lied and they lied. 

Government deception exposed - the great betrayal

Conservative Leadership contest

Oh Dear. It looks like those 48 letters to Graham Brady, Chair of the '22, have already been written. But hang on, chaps, I'm not ready; I re-joined the party (after an absence of about 36 years) in mid August - which means I must wait until mid November to vote. I wonder if the qualifying date is the date the contest is announced, or the date the party membership actually votes? I think we should be told. 

David Davis would do very nicely as the Leader to get us through Brexit. Council estate, grammar school, SAS TA, then business for two decades until Parliament. Keen supporter of civil liberty and a man of proven principles. If the rest of the party won't accept Boris, David, then. Which brings me on to my fantasy cabinet.

Gove as Chancellor. Chancellors don't need to be popular, just clever. Keep Hunt at Health, and Sajid at the Home Office. Move Liam Fox to the FCO and give International Trade to Penny Mordaunt. And a revival of the Prescott / Clegg role for Boris as Deputy Prime Minister. 

Hammond of course must go, as must  Gauke, Clark, and Lidington. Brandon Lewis can become Minister for Plastics without a cabinet seat, with a remit to find ways of stopping the bloody Chinese, Asians, Africans and Indians fom throwing all their waste into the great rivers. 

And of course suitable postings must be found for our dedicated public servants Oliver Robbins and Sly Sedwill, neither of whom I think will wish to remain in Whitehall.