Four awkward moments from David Davis’ Brexit evidence

Brexit Secretary David Davis was accused by fellow Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg of proposing to turn the UK into a “vassal state” during a frought appearance before the Commons Exiting the EU Committee this morning.

Davis was challenged repeatedly by Rees-Mogg, and by the committee chair, Labour’s Hilary Benn, The Guardian reports.

Here are some of the most awkward moments from today’s hearing.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

All change

Benn quoted from a July 2016 article written by Davis for the ConservativeHome website, in which the Brexit Secretary said he expected David Cameron’s successor “to immediately trigger a large round of global trade deals with all our most favoured trade partners” and to “negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU” within two years.

Davis laughed off the quote. “I think that was before I was minister,” he said “That was then, this is now. Basically, I looked at the facts, and as the facts changed, I changed my mind.”

Easy does it

When Labour’s Stephen Timms tried to probe the finer points of parliamentary sovereignty and European Court of Justice (ECJ) oversight, Davis provoked laughter with his response: “It’s all been very straightforward so far, hasn’t it?”

Drawing the line?

The Brexit Secretary also said that anyone who used the phrase “red lines” when going into a negotiation was an “idiot”, after Rees-Mogg accused him of drawing such lines in Brexit talks. Davis was adamant that he had never used the phrase, the Huffington Post reports.

But commentators pointed to a question Davis posed to then-PM Cameron in the House of Commons in 2014: “Will the prime minister tell us his intentions of bringing to this House the red line issues that will feature in his renegotiation, and can he give us a preview of some of those issues today?”

Twitter users noted that the exchange was quoted on Davis’ own website.

Called out

To top it all, Davis’ phone went off during the hearing.