Brexit may not be simple or easy … but fact checking is

Google is a wonderful tool. But it can also be cruel – in particular if you’re a politician. Any statement you make can in an instant be compared with statements you’ve made in the past. You yourself may have forgotten ever making those statements. But Google hasn’t.

In the Commons yesterday, David Davis was attempting to repel criticism of his work as Brexit Secretary. Labour MPS were scoffing at what they believed to be his lack of progress. But Mr Davis was determined to stand firm. “Nobody,” he said defiantly, “ever pretended this would be simple or easy.”

Labour MPS guffawed. Each one of them, after all, was in possession of a mobile phone – and was therefore able immediately to confirm that just six weeks earlier, Liam Fox, Mr Davis’s Cabinet colleague, had promised that a deal with the EU “should be one of the easiest in human history” to negotiate.

They were also able to confirm that, in July 2016, another senior Cabinet figure had forecast that Brexit would be a breeze. “Be under no doubt,” the senior Cabinet figure had trumpeted, in an article for the Conservative Home website. “We can do deals with our trading partners, and we can do them quickly. I would expect [Theresa May] on September 9 [2016] 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.

“So within two years, before the negotiation with the EU is likely to be complete, and therefore before anything material has changed, we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU.”

The man who wrote those words was one David Davis.

Responding for Labour, Sir Keir Starmer quoted both Dr Fox’s remarks, and Mr Davis’s. “The Secretary of State has just said that ‘nobody’ was pretending it would be easy,” sighed Sir Keir. “Mr Speaker, they were pretending it would be easy.”

With a look of intense concentration Mr Davis was scribbling something on his notepad. I couldn’t make out what it was. Perhaps he was just making a note of the predictions he and Dr Fox had made, so that he wouldn’t forget them again.

To be fair to the Brexit Secretary, he isn’t the only one whose memory seems to be playing tricks. On Sunday, Gerard Batten, Ukip’s spokesman on Brexit, also insisted that “no one said it would be easy to reverse 44 years of political and economic integration”. The same Gerard Batten who said a deal with the EU could be completed in “an afternoon over a cup of coffee”.

I suspect we’re going to need stronger coffee.