Always start with a joke. “Of course, we were both members of the whips office at the time of the Maastricht Bill!” David Davis told Lord Boswell of Aynho. David Davis laughed. No one else did.
What’s funny, of course, is that was 25 years ago, and it’s about the last time The Secretary of State For Exiting the European Union had a proper job in government. And it’s not even really a proper job in government.
Still, time flies. And here, before the House of Lords’ European Union Select Committee, David Davis was determined to have fun.
“Appearing before Lords Select Committees is a pleasure,” he told them, slowly relaxing back into an ego that never really deflated to match a 20-year stretch on the political sidelines.
“I like appearing before select committees full stop. But the Lords are always enormously courteous.” Again David Davis laughed alone.
In the two months since Mr Davis was appointed Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, it appears that Exiting the European Union has become far more complex.
Two months ago it was easy. At least according to him, on 11 July.
“I would expect the new Prime Minister on 9 September to immediately trigger a large round of global trade deals with all our most favoured trade partners. I would expect that the negotiation phase of most of them to be concluded within between 12 and 24 months,” he said then.
Now, exiting the European Union “will be the most complex negotiations ever”. No one laughed at that either. Not even David Davis.
“One of the outcomes is the sheer complexity,” he carried on.
“A whole series of economic exercises, a whole series of diplomatic exercises with at least 30 interlocutors, when you include all the member countries, the European Commission, the Council, the Parliament. We’ve got the legal analysis too, and the lawyer won’t be surprised that we have 180 degree opposite opinions.”
This, they did laugh at. Not the scale of the challenge, of course. Which David Davis is close to comprehending. They were, one has to suspect, laughing at the one joke David Davis might not get. That it’s the gravest challenge facing any British politician since the Luftwaffe. And it’s David Davis’s job to sort it out.
