Brexit secretary David Davis admits you don’t have to be clever to do his job as he’s forced to clarify Irish border comments
Brexit secretary David Davis has said his job doesn’t require intelligence or knowledge, while clarifying comments he made yesterday that appeared to undermine the strength of the critical agreement reached on Friday.
“What’s the requirement of my job?” he asked LBC’s Nick Ferrari this morning.
“I don’t have to be very clever. I don’t have to know that much. I just do have to be calm.”
The Brexit secretary was speaking after he told the BBC that the deal, which included commitments over the Irish border, was “more of a statement of intent than it was legally binding”, alarming Dublin who feared it was not a legal guarantee.
Those concerns were exacerbated by a Whitehall source telling the Sunday Telegraph that the phrase “full alignment” between the UK and EU after Brexit “doesn’t meant anything in EU law”.
However this morning the Brexit secretary claimed his words had been misconstrued, claiming what he actually said was that the agreement was “much more than just legally enforceable”.
He added: “In other words, of course it is legally enforceable under the withdrawal agreement. But even if that did not happen for some reason, [if] something went wrong, we would still be seeking to provide a frictionless, invisible border with Ireland. They’ve completely twisted my words, I’m afraid.”
Davis stressed that what he had actually meant was that there would be no hard border “and that sort of thing” even in the event of no deal being reached with the EU.
“Of course it’s legally enforceable – it’s more than legally enforceable,” he said. “In the event that the withdrawal agreement does not happen, then we would still be seeking to maintain an invisible border between Northern Ireland and Ireland. That was the point. I was making the point that it was much more than just in the treaty; it’s what we want to do anyway.”
The Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar this morning welcomed Davis’ words, telling Irish station TV3 he was “delighted” by his remarks, adding that he was “very happy with the clarification”.
On Friday, after a week of wrangling and late-night phone calls aimed at getting the DUP on board, Theresa May was given the backing of Jean-Claude Juncker for Brexit talks to move onto the second phase. The Prime Minister is due to give the House of Commons an update on the negotiations this afternoon.
Last week Davis was accused of misleading parliament over the existence of sectoral impact assessments.