BRITISH politics is dominated by the sound of two ticking clocks. The predictable one reaches zero on March 29th 2019, when Britain leaves the European Union. The unpredictable one reaches zero whenever the burghers of the Conservative Party offer Theresa May a revolver and a glass of whisky. It had looked as if that moment might be put off for some time. But the prime minister’s lamentable handling of the Grenfell Tower fire now suggests it could come any day. The Conservative Party is just one more mess-up away from a leadership contest.

Philip Hammond is emerging as the most impressive candidate to replace Mrs May: a serious man for serious times. He understands that Britain faces two threats which could immiserate the country for years to come. One is a badly handled Brexit that could disrupt British trade; the other is a Labour victory that could plunge Britain back into the 1970s. He recognises the need for as much time as possible to adjust to Brexit—he wants to “get there” via a “slope not a cliff-edge”. He also recognises that the Conservatives must fight Labour and Jeremy Corbyn on the economy. Try to out-emote them and you will lose. Persuade voters that you can’t spend money that you don’t have and the logic of Corbynism collapses.

Mr Hammond is not a perfect candidate. Born a year before Mrs May and a Conservative since his teenage years, he has many of the flaws that have brought the prime minister to her current sorry pass. He is emotionally buttoned up. He belongs to deep Tory England. He has a thumping majority of 18,000 in his Runnymede and Weybridge constituency. He was uncomfortable with David Cameron’s policy of supporting gay marriage. If Mrs May is the “Maybot”, Mr Hammond is “spreadsheet Phil”. Both are equally uncomfortable in a country of quivering lips and ubiquitous tattoos.

Yet if he is cast from the same mould as Mrs May, he is a superior version. He is cleverer. In interviews he answers questions, rather than trotting out trite formulae, and presents admirably nuanced arguments. He can be amusing in private, which is seldom said of Mrs May. He has a broader range of experience than anybody who has reached the top of British politics in recent years—he has been defence and foreign secretary as well as chancellor. Above all, he understands business. He spent his first 20 years after Oxford as a businessman, not a bag-carrier to some politician, running companies in property and medical devices, and he has been assiduous in consulting business over Brexit. His tweet on keeping his job as chancellor captured his priorities: “Pleased to be reappointed so we can now get on and negotiate a Brexit deal that supports British jobs, business and prosperity.”

Mr Hammond is a grown-up in a political playpen that is stuffed with children. The chief claimant to the throne, Boris Johnson, is the most childish of all. Bumptious and bungling, he wants to grab the shiniest prize for himself for no other reason than that it is shiny. Other claimants also have problems with maturity. David Davis, the Brexit secretary, is a vainglorious contrarian who has spent much of his career on the backbenches and who habitually underestimates the damage a bad Brexit might cause. Amber Rudd is a neophyte. Ruth Davidson, the woman who single-handedly revived Scottish Toryism, doesn’t have a Westminster seat. On the other side, Mr Corbyn is an extreme case of arrested development. He is a man-child leading an army of disgruntled youths, a professional protester who has reached his late 60s without ever having to make adult decisions about allocating limited resources, let alone creating them in the first place.

Mr Hammond understands that wealth must be generated before it can be redistributed, or indeed requisitioned. He knows that prosperity is a fragile creation which can be destroyed by foolish policies. The sobriquet “spreadsheet Phil” ignores a shrewd political sense. Worried that patience was running out, he started unwinding austerity even before the election, putting off the target for balancing the budget until the mid-2020s and arguing for more freedom to raise taxes.

Even if Mrs May survives as prime minister, Mr Hammond’s newfound power is a blessing. Previously, she had sidelined him for the sin of seeing the economy as more important than her immigration targets. During the election her co-chiefs of staff, Nicholas Timothy and Fiona Hill, briefed that he would not survive a post-election reshuffle. With the co-chiefs sacked and Mrs May wounded, he is now more powerful than ever. He rightly criticises Mrs May for dodging the economic debate during the election. Making the case for pro-market policies may be harder at a time of stagnant wages, but that is all the more reason to do it. He is now busily reshaping the Brexit debate. While avoiding riling the right with talk of a “soft Brexit”, he argues for a long transition in which Britain might stay in the customs union, “to avoid unnecessary disruption and dangerous cliff-edges”.

A welcome Treasury comeback

Mr Hammond’s rise is also producing a positive change in the distribution of power. In Mrs May’s brief time as prime minister it shifted from the Treasury to the Home Office. Business was almost frozen out of decision-making. This year’s Conservative manifesto competed with Labour’s in its anti-business rhetoric. Now the Treasury is revving up again and business is rediscovering its voice. Plans for rigid immigration targets are being shelved along with plans for putting workers on boards and micromanaging executive pay.

Mr Hammond is not one of those politicians who ignites fires in people’s hearts. But he has the ability to keep the carriage of state trundling along, or at least from falling into a ditch. Given the quality of people in British politics and the gravity of the threats that confront the country, that is about as much as you can reasonably hope for.

Economist.com/blogs/bagehot