Damning #Brexit memo is a wake-up call for us all – including its authors
Theresa May delivers her Mansion House speech, but nobody’s listening: Brexit has already made her the laughing stock of the world.
Members of ‘Big Four’ accountancy firm Deloittes may be waking up to an uncomfortable truth about their friends in the Conservative Government today (November 15) – that a Tory will turn on anyone.
The firm has spent six years helping the Conservatives push their punitive agenda of cuts and privatisation but – after a memo on ‘Brexit’ was leaked to the press – suddenly the Tories don’t recognise Deloittes’ work.
This is despite the apparent fact that the consultant from the firm who wrote the report (titled ‘Brexit update’) was working for the Cabinet Office, according to The Times.
The memo said Whitehall departments were working on more than 500 projects related to leaving the EU and may need to hire an extra 30,000 civil servants to deal with the additional work. That would undo much of the Tories’ work in shrinking the civil service, of course.
It identified a tendency by Theresa May to “draw in decisions and settle matters herself” as a strategy that could not be sustained, and highlighted a split between the three Brexit ministers – Liam Fox, Boris Johnson and David Davis – and the chancellor, Philip Hammond, and his ally Greg Clark, the business secretary as “divisions within the cabinet”. So the Conservative Party is divided again – and we know that divided parties don’t win.
It said major industry players were expected to “point a gun to the government’s head” to get what they wanted after Nissan was given assurances that it would not lose out from investing in Britain after Brexit. We all knew this already.
Perhaps most damningly, it stated that “no common strategy has emerged” on Brexit, despite extended debate among the permanent secretaries who head Whitehall departments.
This is not what the Conservatives want the public to hear, so of course they have disowned the memo, claiming it was “unsolicited”, was not a government memo and the government rejected its contents. They would, wouldn’t they?
The government also tried to smear the memo’s authors by claiming it was a pitch for business – but then, government departments habitually ask firms to submit such work, so this is not proof that the memo was not requested by ministers.
The fact that it fell to Chris ‘Failing’ Grayling – the Transport Secretary – to pass these comments lends them no authenticity whatsoever.
David Davis is the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union – what does he have to say about it? Nothing.
Grayling said he had no idea where the report came from and denied that it had been commissioned by ministers. But then, what would he know about it? He’s the Transport Secretary.
His comments – like “I have a team of people in my department who are working with David Davis on issues like aviation, but I do not see the scale of the challenge that is in today’s newspaper” – are those of a man who is only seeing part of the project, rather than the whole.
Meanwhile, in her Mansion House speech, prime minister Theresa May told an audience of dozing businesspeople that Brexit was an opportunity for the UK to “step up” to a new “global role”.
As what? The world’s clown?
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
It is high time someone said loud and clear to the public that Brexit has only ever been about leadership of the Tory Party and the fight for supremacy in the nasty Tory Party by the hard-line right wing reactionaries, such as Fox, Davis and other extremely unpleasant neo-Nazis.
Well the deloittes link is a guess, the “consultant” could be anyone.
The Tories have lambasted the most powerful European country which could be a valuable trading partner -Russia, The Australians have already told May she can take a running jump and May managed to piss off mightily, President Modi of India.
No doubt she intends to sign us up to the US TPA’s and Canadian stitch up, but then what?
Clueless. Totally f*****g brain dead. She couldn’t organize a booze up in a brewery. The transition away from the EU must include full parliament and cross party negotiation before Article 50 is invoked or Britain will fall in a hole as a “World economy”.
In 2010 when David Cameron blathered on about a single mum waiting for a food parcel “in this, the fourth largest economy in the world, under a Labour Government” things seemed pretty dire then. Now we have food banks all over the country and whole families, let alone single mums, have desperate need of them in this the sixth largest economy in the world under a Conservative Government, it can only get worse because of Tory mismanagement of our economic and fiscal strategy, throw in Brexit and May and Britain will be lucky to be in the top ten world economies.
If only John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn were leading this Brexit, we would at least have some chance.
I wanna go home – Oh s**t, I AM home.
Rats in a sinking ship comes to mind
There isn’t anything the Con’s will not use, abuse & discredit. Look what Cameron did to his grassroots. Any company if they have any sense whatsoever must protect themselves against this Government