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When he was Justice Secretary, Chris Grayling banned prisoners from receiving books, the most heartless thing any Government has done in living memory.

With his latest £2billion bailout for billionaires Sir Richard Branson and Sir Brian Souter , he has another plinth in the hall of shame – as the most incompetent and malevolent minister in recent British history.

His incompetence as Transport Secretary is obvious and the private rail companies are milking him for all he’s worth.

Grayling announced last year that Branson and Souter’s lucrative East Coast franchise, operated by their Virgin/Stagecoach empires, was making a huge loss.

(Image: PA)

What he should have done – as I did when faced with a similar situation as Transport Secretary nine years ago – was to say to the billionaires: pay up or I will nationalise your rail company and not allow you to bid for any more franchises in the future.

By doing this, I sent a clear message to the other private rail companies that they couldn’t take taxpayers for a ride. No other company dared default.

By contrast, Grayling ann­­ounced publicly that he wouldn’t have anything to do with nationalisation. Even where a private company was proposing to renege on multi-billion-pound contracts with the Government, he would still bail them out.

He did this by agreeing to cancel the loss-making Virgin/Stagecoach East Coast Rail franchise – operating the line from London to Edinburgh – three years early in 2020, a move that saved Branson and Souter £2billion.

(Image: Newcastle Chronicle)

As soon as the billionaires had trousered this £2billion, they did what shrewd business tycoons always do in such circumstances. They went for the jugular and demanded even more.

Which is why, this week, Grayling announced that their East Coast contract would now end this year, because Branson and Souter were “running out of money”. Except they are not running out of money – they are playing Grayling for all they can get.

Rail passengers and taxpayers are the ones running out of money as they pay ever-higher rail fares, and suffer worse services, to pay for Grayling’s bailouts.

Even more astonishingly, on the same day that Grayling announced the second bailout, he handed Virgin another contract, for the West Coast Main Line services from London to Glasgow, and told Stagecoach that it could bid for the next three rail franchises to be awarded by the Government.

(Image: EPA)

This is where Grayling becomes malevolent. Why is he so determined to hand all these contracts to companies deserting their obligations to the taxpayer?

Purely and simply because he doesn’t want to concede a political point to Jeremy Corbyn on the issue of public ownership.

It is of a piece of Grayling’s Brexit extremism. Anything goes in terms of trashing British trade and jobs so long as it gets Britain out of the EU next year in order to do the bidding of Nigel Farage and UKIP – Grayling’s ideological soulmates.

State auditors will in due course examine the Grayling bailouts. I would be surprised if they don’t make biting criticisms of his cavalier attitude to public money.

But by then he will be wreaking havoc in yet another job in Brexit Britain, unless we succeed in stopping the whole shambles and elect a Labour government and bring good order back to Whitehall.

(Image: PA)

Brexit is the key to understanding Grayling. As an extreme Thatcherite Brexiter, he sees it as the means to dismantle social and environmental protection in Britain.

Once we are out of Europe, a right-wing Tory government including Grayling at the vanguard will take an axe to the social chapter, to working time rules, and to measures to combat climate change.

It is only because of Brexit that Grayling is in the Government at all. An ardent Leave campaigner alongside Farage in the Brexit referendum, he went on to run Theresa May ’s campaign for the Tory leadership.

He had to be rewarded with a job despite his record of utter disaster as Justice Secretary, where a botched privatisation caused the collapse of the Probation Service.

(Image: REX/Shutterstock)

Grayling and Trade Secretary Liam Fox , Brexit Secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson are a Brexit cabal at the heart of Government: incompetent, malevolent but unsackable.

They hold the Prime Minister under virtual house arrest in Downing Street and oblige her to follow an extreme Brexit policy.

This includes, announced just this week, forcing Britain out of the EU Customs Union, a union which ensures that our imports and exports pay no duties and are subject to no controls.

Millions of jobs will be jeopardised by this step alone.

What should be the first statute of a Corbyn government? A law banning Grayling from ever again holding public office and causing mayhem in government and society. It can’t come too soon.