Brexit: Jacob Rees-Mogg revives attacks on Hammond and civil service – Politics live

Rolling coverage of the day’s political developments as they happen, including Michel Barnier’s Brexit talks with David DavisNo 10 lobby briefing – Summary 1.58pm GMT Donald Trump has criticised the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and Theresa May for her stance on terrorism, but now he’s really blown it with the British public. He’s had a go at the national religion, aka the NHS.The Democrats are pushing for Universal HealthCare while thousands of people are marching in the UK because their U system is going broke and not working. Dems want to greatly raise taxes for really bad and non-personal medical care. No thanks! 1.21pm GMT Jacob Rees-Mogg, the leading Tory Brexiter, has launched a fresh attack on Philip Hammond, the chancellor, telling students at a Press Association event this morning that Hammond is undermining Brexit government policy. He also took another swipe at civil servants. Here are the key points.There are concerns that there are some people close to government who are trying to undermine the government’s own policy.It’s now been [made[ clear we’re not having the customs union, [it] is a reiteration of policy [that] the only person who seemed to be disagreeing with was the chancellor of the exchequer, and he ought to read up his constitution and think more carefully about what collective responsibility means.When you take these models of what happens unless you stay in the customs union, they are all completely dependent on the inputs that you start with, and the inputs that they have started with are ones that lead to the conclusion that you have to stay in the customs union, other economists have used different inputs and looked at different modelling of global trade which says we’ll do extremely well by not being in the customs union. And so do I think civil servants are politically biased, well I think the information the Treasury has produced is biased, but the blame must always be with ministers.Lord O’Donnell has said that we’re snake oil salesmen and he was cabinet secretary up until 2011 and in 2010 George Osborne, then chancellor, set up the Office for Budget Responsibility.Why did he set it up? He set it up because we needed an independent body because nobody trusted the figures coming from the Treasury, which were political. Continue reading…
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