Chancellor Philip Hammond behaves as the grown up while cabinet colleagues drink from the stupid cup

In calling for flexibility and pragmatism in his Mansion House speech, the Chancellor was talking sense. It will be on him to explain why the economy has stalled when Brexit goes bad

The Chancellor knows only too well that if the Brexit fundamentalist fools who sit around the cabinet table with him get their way, they will crater the economy (Reuters)

You have to feel a little sorry for Philip Hammond. The Chancellor might have all the charisma of a piece of celery, but he gives every impression of being one of the modern Conservative Party’s rare grownups.

That's partly because of his job. It can’t be much fun for him having to constantly listen to business and City leaders telling him Brexit is already creating a godawful mess and that it is only going to get worse. But listen he does.

So he knows only too well that if the Brexit fundamentalist fools who sit around the cabinet table with him get their way (and a frightening number are still suggesting Britain should simply storm out of the EU in a huff and try trading under WTO rules with all its tariffs and restrictions) they will crater the economy.

Mr Hammond, who gave his Mansion House Speech this morning, sees the figures, and the projections. He reads the studies written by clever people. All of them look grim.

He will be well aware, too, that it will be him that has to get up at the dispatch box to answer for the crunch when they are proved right, while the spoiled children he sits alongside are sulking in their bedrooms with their allies.

I imagine he must get to his desk sometimes and sigh, quietly wishing that some of them would just stop drinking from the stupid cup for five minutes.

“The UK has come along way,” he opined, knowing full well that it is about to go into reverse.

That process has already started. Britain was Europe’s second fastest growing economy after Germany last year, as the Chancellor was at pains to stress. This year, it’s moved into the slow lane, and with wages becalmed as inflation eats into living standards, it could very well find itself broken down on the hard shoulder before we know it. Anyone got a number for the economic AA?

“Britain is weary after seven years of hard slog repairing the damage of the great recession.”

On that, Mr Hammond is quite correct. Trouble is, there’s another one of those on the way, and it might be even worse. See the above comment about the stupid cup. There’s Michael Gove, Boris Johnson and David Davis passing it around. Liam Fox would be with them, but he seems to have got lost along the way.

“Stronger growth is the only sustainable way to deliver better public services, higher real wages and increased living standards.”

The subtext? The chances of my delivering that have been crippled as a result of my Brexiteer colleagues chucking me under the bus. And the rest of Britain along with me.

Perhaps it’s time to tweak their noses: “Just as the British people understand the benefits of trade – so, too, they understand how important it is to business to be able to access global talent and to move individuals around their organisations. So, while we seek to manage migration, we do not seek to shut it down.”

Is the rest of Britain really as understanding as Mr Hammond says it is on this particular subject? I wish it were so, but immigration played a big role in the EU referendum, or more correctly the fear of it, stoked in ways which didn’t just flirt with racism. They walked right on up the aisle and said let’s have a party. They really should have been called out.

Mr Hammond is supposed to be pally with Amber Rudd, but there’s scant sign that her Home Office is capable of managing the booze at a House of Commons summer party, let alone overseeing an immigration system fit for economic purpose. By the way, she was the one who floated the idea about companies keeping registers of foreign workers. It isn't just hardcore Brexiteers that drink from the stupid cup every now and again.

Where the hell are we going to get the qualified people we need from? That is something else I'd imagine that Mr Hammond hears from business leaders when he gets together for pow wows with them.

“The British people did not vote to become poorer or less secure,” he opined. Indeed they did not. But they’re going to have to put up with both because they were lied to. They might not yet realise that, but they soon will.

Mr Hammond’s speech was basically an appeal for a damage limitation exercise. “We must be flexible and pragmatic,” he said. Because, of course, he is a grownup.

The problem for him is that his colleagues are anything but, and they’re backed by a phalanx of commentators and rent-a-gobs who have also been drinking from the stupid cup.