“Chris Grayling’s plan to run no-deal Brexit ferries from Ramsgate is in danger of collapsing if the local council approves swingeing budget cuts to the port, a senior Whitehall source has admitted.
The transport secretary handed Seaborne Freight, a company with no ships, a £13.8m contract to lay on Channel crossings to relieve pressure on Dover if the UK leaves the EU without a deal on March 29.
But Thanet District Council is planning cuts of £730,000 to the port of Ramsgate, amid severe funding pressures.
If councillors approve the budget on Thursday night it would put the entire Seaborne venture “at risk”, the source told HuffPost UK.
The revelation prompted Labour to accuse Grayling of “incompetence on an epic scale”.
The transport secretary has already faced fierce criticism for giving the contract to Seaborne, a company which last month admitted error after apparently copying and pasting the terms and conditions section of its website from a takeaway delivery outlet.
The mayor of Ostend, at the Belgian end of the planned crossing, has also said it would be impossible to have a new service up and running by the end of March.
But the Department for Transport (DfT) said it continues to have “conversations” with the council, among other organisations, “over any plans to re-establish ferry services at the port of Ramsgate”.
The Ramsgate Action Group, which has been campaigning against the Seaborne plan, said it was now “dead in the water” unless the DfT steps in. …”
East Devon Watch 
I agree that Grayling should never have approved such an agreement. It may prove to be his albatross. Politicians sink ever lower in the estimation of the voters?
But looking at the finance, the contract has far more money in it than can be readily spent on non-existent boats and port arrangements, so apart from the possibilities of grossly inflated salaries divvying up under 1 million to bale out the Council is hardly big potatoes to get your hands on the main contract? Perhaps that idea has crossed the minds of the Councillors. Surely not. Perish the thought. Quite impossible.
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