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Jo Johnson’s right: there are other Brexit options

Ramsgate Harbour hasn’t changed much since JMW Turner used to paint it two centuries ago. The last lacklustre five-hour ferry service to Belgium went bust in 2013. The town’s many charms don’t include a central role in keeping our supermarkets stocked and people fed. But don’t tell the Transport Secretary, Chris Grayling. He’s just picked it as an alternative to chaos-hit Dover if there’s a no-deal Brexit, reportedly allocating £200 million of taxpayers’ money for work on the port including last-minute dredging through this winter’s storms, to make it ready for a service we shouldn’t need and which doesn’t exist.

Small details such as this in the big picture of history can be telling. The Ramsgate story is absurd but it is also evidence of the derangement produced by deadlock on Brexit, diagnosed by the now former Transport Minister Jo Johnson in our interview with him today. The Prime Minister’s planned deal, he says, is nothing less than a “calculated deceit” and a “con”.

When someone who was a senior minister warns the country that it is on the verge of a historic mistake, it is right to listen. Mr Johnson has done an admirable thing in calling out a patent untruth: the idea that the only choice facing MPs now is between the Government’s unloved proposals on Brexit and no-deal at all, with all the catastrophe that would bring.

There are other options, as he points out. Business, and organisations such as the CBI especially, shouldn’t make the mistake of helping Downing Street frame the question as my deal or no deal. If they do, they are failing their members, the business community and the country.

To borrow from the language of the Cold War, they shouldn’t let themselves become the useful idiots of an administration that has not shown itself to be very clever.

Underground payments

Driving a Tube train is a skilled and high-pressure job. So it’s right that staff are given proper rest breaks and decent pay. Still, the £52,972 base pay a Freedom of Information request revealed that they got in 2017 — plus overtime at £36.26 an hour — is a lot more than many Londoners in other very demanding jobs get. Positions for A&E nurses in the capital, for instance, are being advertised at between £26,576 and £34,049 a year. A qualified police constable at the Met gets £30,369.

So news today that 18,000 Tube staff are getting an inflation-busting 3.85 per cent pay rise on top of many already large salaries won’t go down well with many of those who travel on the service. It’s their earnings which pay for these increases, after all — which is why fares keep going up. It’s not as if Transport for London can afford it: the organisation is facing a massive deficit, which is why it is doing unpopular things like cutting back bus services.

Why the big pay rise, then? Because Tube unions have a stranglehold on the system and keep threatening strikes. Tough luck, for the rest of us.

Chilling out at the house

For a building that was originally designed to accommodate late Georgian tax inspectors, Somerset House has undergone an impressive cultural reinvention. There’s the Courtauld Gallery, which is now being rebuilt. There are exhibitions of all sorts —including, right now, one celebrating Snoopy. And then there’s the annual highlight, the ice rink, which opens this week. It has become a new London way of marking the start of the festive season.

If you’re not an aspiring Winter Olympian, there’s also the Winter Lodge with creamy hot chocolate, mulled wine and fondue, as well as a programme of Skate Late club nights. Independent east London-based radio station Rinse FM is broadcasting live from the rink, bringing together the best from all corners of the city — get your skates on.