A hard Brexit with a soft landing?

published 23 June 2017

850-Hammond-634 — Philip Hammond: "out of the closet"

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".

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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".

Matthew graduated from the University of Durham in 2004; he then gained an MSc, followed by a PhD at the London School of Economics.

He has previously written for a wide range of publications, including the Guardian and the Economist, and also helped to run a newsletter on terrorism. He has spent time at Lehman Brothers, Citigroup and the consultancy Lombard Street Research.

Matthew is the author of Superinvestors: Lessons from the greatest investors in history, published by Harriman House, which has been translated into several languages. His second book, Investing Explained: The Accessible Guide to Building an Investment Portfolio, is published by Kogan Page.

As senior writer, he writes the shares and politics & economics pages, as well as weekly Blowing It and Great Frauds in History columns He also writes a fortnightly reviews page and trading tips, as well as regular cover stories and multi-page investment focus features.

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