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David Davis: ‘Take inspiration for Brexit talks from my SAS days’

Former Brexit secretary and Brexiteer David Davis MP. Photograph: Wiktor Dabkowski - Credit: DPA/PA Images

Dangerous David Davis hopes to inspire Brexit negotiators with advice from his SAS days but has warned no-deal will cause ‘immediate harm’.

The former Brexit secretary, who walked out of government over the prime minister’s Chequers plan, told a fringe event at Conservative conference ‘we shouldn’t frighten ourselves to death’.

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But, in hope of inspiring Britain to come out fighting, he added some advice he was given while on an interrogation course during his Territorial Army SAS days: ‘The only thing that will defeat you on this is your own imagination.’

The hard-line Brexiteer added though that there would be ‘immediate harm’ on both sides if Britain crashed out of Europe without a deal.

But he claimed things would be resolved swiftly.

And heightening the war of words between the Treasury and Brexiteers he also claimed chancellor Philip Hammond used forecasts he knew were inaccurate during preparations for a no-deal Brexit.

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He said: ‘It used to drive me mad sometimes when government ministers, I’ll name no names but you can make a very easy guess, he’s been on the air today, we’d get to a negotiation point and suddenly somebody over here would start saying, ‘Oh, we are in a terrible problem here, we can’t do this, we can’t do that, we are in difficulty, all these companies are going to leave the country’.

‘No they are not.’

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