The summer hasn’t been kind to David Davis. Normally at this time of year, the bags under his eyes have receded a little and he looks like a man who might have something approximating to a life. But now that the Brexit secretary has had to spend much of the parliamentary recess being outmanoeuvred by the EU negotiators, he has the air of a man who has been subjected to a sleep deprivation torture programme. He is the living dead.
Not that Davis chose to make life easier for himself on his first day back in parliament. Although he was obliged to give a statement to the house on the progress made in the July and August rounds of Brexit negotiations, no one would have blamed him if he had just cut his losses and said: “None”. Instead, he reverted to his default position of winging it.
“We have made concrete progress on important issues,” he began. This prompted a few raised eyebrows from his own benches and open derision from the opposition. Davis couldn’t look anyone in the eye after that humiliation and raced through the rest of his speech in a hurried, lazy mumble. He’d set up some important sub-groups on something or other – he couldn’t quite remember what – and both Britain and the EU had agreed to carry on calling Ireland “Ireland” regardless. Magnificent achievements both.
After going on to suggest that the EU should try to be a bit more imaginative in its approach to the negotiations – presumably he meant that Michel Barnier should try to imagine he was dealing with halfwits rather than intelligent adults – Davis did concede that there were still one or two significant differences to be bridged. But it wasn’t his fault. His hands were tied because of some idiot who had agreed to the EU’s negotiating timetable earlier in the summer. He’d give that Davis hell if he ever caught up with him.
“No one ever pretended this will be simple and easy,” he concluded, apparently forgetting that he, Liam Fox and Boris Johnson had frequently insisted just that over the past year. As it wasn’t altogether clear if Davis had just decided to cut his losses and go for a knockabout standup comedy routine or if he was suffering a full-on narcissistic breakdown and was in need of urgent psychiatric help, Keir Starmer chose to hedge his bets in reply.
Where Davis had managed an incoherent ramble, the shadow Brexit secretary adopted a more statesmanlike tone – along with what sounded like genuine concern for the minister’s mental health. While he accepted that there would inevitably be frustrations in the negotiations, he couldn’t help noticing that on many issues Britain and the EU seemed to be further apart than they were at the start. He then – ever so gently and more in sorrow than in anger – reminded Davis of some of his and the government’s more gung-ho predictions of what a doddle Brexit was going to be.
By now Davis was in such a pitiful state he could barely recognise himself, let alone speak. Meaningful sentences eluded him. No one understood just how difficult his life was. How could the government possibly have anticipated that the EU would use time constraints to put pressure on the UK for a financial settlement after triggering article 50? And when he had rubbished one of his own Brexit position papers as useless blue sky thinking he hadn’t meant to rubbish it because blue sky thinking was actually quite imaginative when you came to think about it.
Thereafter every MP – with the exception of Conservatives John Redwood and Jacob Rees-Mogg, who were hyperventilating at the prospect of Davis being as far gone as they were – tried to steer Davis back towards his more rational self by talking him through the options of a sensible transitional deal that wouldn’t ruin the country. But this only spurred Davis on to greater madness as he began to insist that he could get the whole of Brexit wrapped up in a matter of months.
Labour’s Chris Bryant accused him of playing fantasy politics. “I’m not in fantasy land,” Davis yelled. You’ll never take me alive. Top of the world, Ma. The house fell silent to take this in. Because if Davis wasn’t in fantasy land, where the hell was he?
