David davis

An unexpected silver lining to leaving government is that I have a much nicer parliamentary office. The Chancellor’s traditional room in the House of Commons is rather dank and gloomy, with peeling ceiling plaster. Despite repeated efforts by pest control, it is overrun with moths. As a backbencher, my new office is, by contrast, a large, bright room overlooking the Thames and the London Eye. The office used to belong to David Davis, who was — rather reluctantly, I understand — forced to vacate it on entering government. So far I have resisted the jovial advice from various fellow MPs to have my new room swept to make sure it

While Theresa May is adamant that her government will not give a running commentary on Brexit, David Davis talked relatively freely on the topic at the Exiting the European Union Committee. He said he would not negotiate control of immigration in Article 50 talks, and that the aim is to have access to the single market that’s as close as possible to the UK’s current position. However, MPs hoping to see May’s much-anticipated Brexit plan will have to wait. Davis said this will not be published until February at the earliest, as a lot of research and policy work still needs to be done. He did, however, pave the way for

461 MPs have just voted for Theresa May to invoke Article 50 by the end of March. The Tory amendment to Labour’s opposition day motion passed comfortably with only 89 MPs opposing it—and Ken Clarke the only Tory amongst them with 20-odd Labour Mps joining the SNP and the Lib Dems in voting against. Now, this vote is not binding and if the government loses its appeal to the Supreme Court will not be sufficient to satisfy the courts. But it does indicate that the government will be able to get an Article 50 bill through the Commons without too much trouble. It does make you wonder why Theresa May

David Davis put the cat among the pigeons in the chamber today. The Brexit secretary — who takes a more relaxed approach to discussing Brexit than his tight-lipped boss — talked at length as he was asked various questions on the government’s Brexit position. The news line came after Labour’s Wayne David asked if the government would consider ‘making any contribution in any shape or form for access to the single market’ after Brexit. In response, David said the government would consider it: ‘The major criterion here is that we get the best possible access for goods and services to the European market. And if that is included in what he’s talking about, then

In his admirably brief and necessarily brutal, Brexit: What the Hell Happens Now, Ian Dunt tells how civil servants brief business leaders while they wait to meet David Davis. For all his appearance as a tough guy with the strength to handle the most complicated diplomatic crisis the British have faced since the Second World War, Davis seems closer in spirit to a bubbly PR girl than a hard-headed statesman. He wants to hear only good news. He wants to see only smiling faces. Like Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union thinks we should all accentuate the positive. On no account

David Davis tried to reassure Tory MPs that last week’s court ruling — and the forthcoming supreme court appeal — would not delay the government invoking Article 50, in a Commons statement this afternoon. The Brexit secretary re-stated Theresa May’s words that the government values the independence of the judiciary and the freedom of the press. He insisted that, despite the appeal, May still plans to trigger Article 50 by the end of March. The subsequent debate, however, made clear just how much division there is on the issue — as Davis accused those MPs demanding control over Brexit of wanting to ‘wreck the negotiation’. Anna Soubry’s call for ‘temperate’

Today it was a case of the ghosts of governments past as George Osborne, Michael Heseltine and Vince Cable were hauled before the Commons Business Committee to discuss the UK’s industrial strategy. What followed was a bit of a love-in as Heseltine commended Osborne for his time in the Cabinet – praising Cameron’s government for working on industrial strategy ‘on a bigger scale than any previous government’. Less popular during the session were the Brexit bunch. Heseltine mocked May’s three Brexiteers – Liam Fox, Boris Johnson and David Davis. When asked by Richard Fuller how important it was for Britain to secure free trade agreements, he jokingly replied that he

David Davis batted away demands for parliament to be given a vote on the timing of Article 50 or the government’s negotiating stance. Whenever his opponents—who included Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg—brought up how Davis himself had previously said there should be a white paper on the government’s negotiating stance, Davis side-stepped the issue. He also claimed that his views on how the executive should be accountable to parliament hadn’t changed, but that there was a difference between scrutiny and micro-managing. What the government wanted out of the Brexit talks, said Davis, was control of the UK’s borders and laws, co-operation on justice and security matters that is at least

Ladies and gentlemen, on the 23rd of June the British people voted for change. And this is going to be the biggest change for a generation: we are going to leave the European Union. It was we, the Conservative Party, who promised the British people a referendum. It was David Cameron, a Conservative Prime Minister, who honoured that promise. And now it will be this government, a Conservative government that will lead the United Kingdom out of the European Union and into a brighter and better future. This must be a team effort. And I am proud to count myself part of Theresa May’s team. I don’t know what it

Theresa May has said she won’t be providing a ‘running commentary’ on Brexit. That refusal, the Prime Minister insisted, was to ensure the Government did not reveal its ‘hand prematurely’ to other European countries in its negotiations. But how is May’s Brexit reticence going down closer to home? Not well, it seems: only one in six people think the Prime Minister is doing a good job in the early stages of negotiations. While half of voters think May is doing badly. May’s reputation is particularly miserable among ‘Remain’ voters: just one in ten thinking she is doing a good job so far. You might say that none of this is much

What does Theresa May believe? The new Prime Minister has had the summer to settle into her job and has a chance next week to tell us more about her plans for government. Had she come to power after a general election, or even a proper leadership race, we’d know more about her. Instead, she has the Tory party conference to introduce voters to their new government. We know already that her focus is on those who are ‘just managing’, a phrase that trips off the tongue far more lightly than ‘the squeezed middle’ (Ed Miliband) or ‘alarm-clock Britain’ (Nick Clegg). But there are still vast lacunae in her philosophy,

Hinkley Point — for all its flaws and the whiffs of suspicion around its Chinese investors — has finally received Downing Street’s blessing. Meanwhile, ministers hold the party line that High Speed 2 will go ahead according to plan, backed by news that the project has already bought £2 billion worth of land; and investors hunt for shares in the construction sector that might benefit from the multi-billion-pound infrastructure spree widely expected in Chancellor Philip Hammond’s autumn statement. But still no decision on a new airport runway for London — the one piece of digger work, short of tunnelling under the Atlantic, that would signal Britain’s raging post-Brexit appetite for

Since the nation voted to leave the European Union in the referendum, Brexit has been described as a lot of things by a lot of people. However, until now Mr S had not heard it be described as sexy. At today’s European Union Select Committee, David Davis — the Brexit secretary — claimed that his brief is the ‘sexiest area of politics’. He made the comments as he answered a question on the possibility of establishing a ‘clearing house’ where interested parties can get in touch with the department: ‘As you can imagine — because this really is the sexiest area of politics at the moment — everybody writes to us. And my

Theresa May didn’t choose a quiet life when she appointed David Davis as the Brexit Secretary, Liam Fox as the International Trade Secretary and Boris Johnson as the Foreign Secretary. Mostly, the men have bickered amongst themselves up to this point. But today the Prime Minister’s official spokeswoman put some distance between May and her minister charged with Brexit negotiations. Yesterday Davis had told the Commons that he thought it unlikely that Britain would be able to retain single market access while also controlling EU migration. He said: ‘This government is looking at every option but the simple truth is that if a requirement of membership is giving up control

David Davis has just finished his first statement to the Commons on the process for the UK exiting the European Union. Davis’s initial statement stuck closely to what the government has said already; the coordinated Labour backbench heckle of ‘waffle, waffle’ had some truth to it. But it was striking that Davis said he hoped the UK’s security relationship with the EU would be as close or closer post-Brexit; in Whitehall, Britain’s intelligence and military capabilities are regarded as one of our key assets in the negotiation. But in answer to the questions that followed, Davis–a naturally frank politician—gave a clearer sense of what he means by Brexit. In answer

When it was reported that Liam Fox and Boris Johnson are already squabbling about who should be in charge of what in relation to Brexit, this was taken by some to be a feather in Theresa May’s cap. Isn’t she clever to have set Leavers against one another, was the thought. Downing Street sources were quoted as saying that she took a dim view of these silly games. But if it is true that Cabinet ministers are already at loggerheads about their roles, might that not suggest that the Prime Minister who invented these roles — and entire new government departments — has not properly defined them? Certainly the short-term

Why is everyone so chilled out about the threats to Brexit? Why isn’t there more public fury over the plotting of lords and academics and experts to stymie Brexit and thwart the will of 17.4m people? In all the years I’ve been writing about politics, I cannot remember a time when democracy has been treated with as much disgust, with as much naked, Victorian-era elitism, as it is being today. And yet we’re all bizarrely mellow. We’re going about our business as if everything is normal, as if the elites aren’t right now, this very minute, in revolt against the people. We need to wake up. Every day brings fresh

‘Brexit means Brexit’ is one of the most brilliant political soundbites of recent times. It worked wonders for Theresa May during the Tory leadership contest. It showed that she didn’t intend to ignore the referendum result — that would have been politically suicidal — but the phrase is essentially meaningless. Brexit could mean many things. The question of what it actually is will define British politics for the next five years at least; it will be no surprise if we are still arguing about it in a decade’s time. At its most basic, Brexit means leaving the European Union. But the real debate is going to be about how the