‘I’m more determined than ever that we press ahead with Brexit’
Monmouth Conservative MP David Davies – his party’s most prominent Brexiteer in Wales – expected Brexit negotiations to go more smoothly than they have. He tells chief reporter Martin Shipton why he thinks that’s happened
THE morning after Leave won the EU referendum, David Davies set up a stall in the centre of Newport with some of his Brexit friends and played The Great Escape over a loudspeaker.
There was something engagingly unreal about the scene, as if it was an innocent attempt to create a piece of wartime nostalgia.
What was noticeable was the lack of triumphalism in the speeches given by Mr Davies and Ukip MEP Nathan Gill.
For the MP, this was entirely deliberate.
After meeting the Prime Minister for an inevitable discussion about Brexit, he told me yesterday: “Things haven’t turned out as I expected.
“I remembered back to the 1997 referendum on whether a Welsh Assembly should be set up. Like most Conservatives, I voted No, but on the morning after the referendum I decided there was no point in carrying on as an opponent and to accept that the Assembly was going to come into being.
“When we won the Brexit referendum, I accepted that 48% of those who voted didn’t want the UK to leave the EU. My hope was that the country would come together and accept the result, but that because so many had voted Remain there would be a compromise.
“Unfortunately that didn’t happen. From immediately after the referendum, there were leading figures on the Remain side who wanted to overturn the result. They weren’t interested in accepting that a majority wanted to leave, but have worked ever since at undermining the democratic will of the people.
“I think that’s absolutely shocking, to be honest. Apart from undermining democracy, it’s also made the task of the UK’s negotiators a lot more difficult.”
Mr Davies said the negative approach of the Remain camp, as he saw it, was replicated in the attitude of the EU towards the negotiations.
He said: “Frankly, the way the EU has behaved has convinced me more than ever that coming out is the right thing to do.
“What they should have done is regret the decision we’d made, but been prepared to work constructively with the UK to ensure there could be as smooth a Brexit as possible.
“Instead, it seems to me they have gone out of their way to punish the UK, and to let it be known that no other country should contemplate leaving because they would be given a hard time. That’s a shocking way to negotiate, but goes to the heart of why I believe we would be better off outside the EU.”
Mr Davies said he was angered by the suggestion that overspending by the Leave campaigns and allegedly misleading messages had influenced the result of the referendum and that it should be nullified.
“I completely reject that argument,” he said. “The Remain side had access to far greater resources than we did. They had the UK Government on their side, and a proRemain leaflet paid for by taxpayers put through everyone’s door.
“The complaints about the bus slogan which said £350m was paid every week to the EU that should go to the NHS instead were wrong. That was the gross figure, it’s true, and the net figure was £175m, but in putting the gross figure the campaign was simply playing by the usual rules.
“Whenever I see a building with a plaque saying that £80,000 has come from an EU grant, I don’t say the figure should be reduced to £40,000 to take account of the net contribution the UK makes to the EU.”
Mr Davies is also unpersuaded by the ridicule that has been heaped on successive Brexit Secretaries for failing to deliver impressive international trade agreements. He said: “If we can do new trade deals, so much the better. But the fact is that we already trade with many countries on WTO (World Trade Organisation) rules. The United States is already our biggest single trading partner before we leave the EU. We are doing trade all the time under WTO rules with many countries and the total amount of trade is worth more than our trade with the EU.”
Mr Davies also wasn’t phased by suggestions that many financial services companies are planning to quit country for EU cities like Frankfurt. “They’d have gone by now, wouldn’t they?”, he claimed. “We’re a big trading nation, and I think it’s just as likely that financial services companies from the EU will want to move to the UK to have access to our market.”
Mr Davies also rejected the suggestion that there would be huge queues at ports because of new customs checks: “I’m one of the few MPs who in a previous life was a lorry driver. I had weekly runs to Italy, delivering brake parts. It was before the Single Market and there were still customs checks. But it didn’t amount to much – I would deliver some papers to the customs office and before I’d had a cup of coffee and a cigarette – I used to smoke then – it would be time to get on the ferry. What we’re hearing is a lot of scaremongering.”
“All of these arguments have made me more determined than ever that we must go ahead with Brexit. The Remain side have gone to court, they’ve tried to get the House of Lords to frustrate the necessary legislation.
“How would supporters of the Assembly have felt in 1997 if instead of accepting the result of the referendum which took place then, we had gone to the High Court to try to get it overturned or asked the House of Lords to block the Assembly on some technical grounds? We would never have heard the last of it.”