Skimpy studies? Ignorant decisions? David Davis has all the answers

Before entering politics, David Davis was a senior executive at Tate & Lyle. Naturally, his wisdom was sought throughout the world of management. In 1985, no less than the Harvard Business Review commissioned him to write an article about the risks inherent in launching big projects. Here was his advice.

Big projects, warned Mr Davis, frequently proved far costlier than managers had bargained for – particularly if the projects suffered from “inadequate design”, with managers recklessly “proceeding with the project on the basis of a skimpy feasibility study with many unknowns”. All too often, he wrote, “ignorance governs decisions”, but “the people connected with their development rarely admit it”.

Ultimately, concluded Mr Davis, it was better to “abandon the project rather than throw good money after bad”. Regrettably, however, some managers simply couldn’t bring themselves to take such a difficult decision because they feared “closing down a project will wreck their careers”. And so, instead, they would “carry on, in the hope they will have a chance of saving their reputations” – even at the “risk of disaster”.

Of course, Mr Davis’s days at Tate & Lyle are now long behind him, so he no longer has to worry about such perils. Yesterday, he strolled into the Commons to field his monthly session of questions about Brexit.

Inevitably, Labour MPS were again harping on about the forecasts of weaker economic growth outside the EU. The Brexit Secretary waved them away. “Every forecast that has been made about the period postreferendum has been wrong,” he trumpeted.

So why were post-brexit economic forecasts always so gloomy? Jacob Rees-mogg, high priest of the backbench Brexiteers, claimed he’d heard a rumour, which he attributed to Charles Grant of the Centre for European Reform, that Treasury officials had “deliberately developed a model to show that all options other than staying in the customs union are bad – and they intended to use this to influence policy”.

With a look of profound sorrow, Steve Baker – a Brexit minister and former member of Vote Leave – confirmed that “this allegation was put to me”. It would, he said gravely, “be quite extraordinary if it turned out that such a thing had happened”.

Shortly afterwards, Mr Grant – the supposed source of this allegation – tweeted: “Let me clarify, I never said Treasury officials had deliberately constructed models to show all futures outside the customs union were bad, with the intent of influencing policy.”

In Mr Davis’s excellent article for Harvard Business Review, he had written: “Everyone concerned with the project must be prepared to recognise and announce serious snags when they become evident. This can be difficult, especially when the first sign of failure precipitates a search for a scapegoat.”