Brexit: Theresa May denies David Davis and his department were cut out of EU negotiations

Theresa May has hit back at accusations that ex-Brexit secretary David Davis and his department were cut out of the withdrawal negotiations with the EU.

The prime minister refuted the suggestion that Mr Davis was not deeply involved the production of her new negotiating strategy and had not been shown it soon enough before it was published.

Ms May also faced accusations that the entire Department for Exiting the EU was merely a “Potemkin” department, there for show, while a ‘softer’ Brexit plan was being drawn up by her own advisors.

During an interview on Sunday morning, she reminded would-be rebels that there will be no leadership contest until they win a vote of no confidence – something that her aides believe there is not enough support for.

The row comes as Brexiteer rebels make louder noises of descent over her approach to negotiations set out in her white paper, and threatened “guerrilla warfare” – Mr Davis and Boris Johnson are also both expected to speak out against her this week.

Speaking to BBC One’s Andrew Marr programme, the prime minister said: “Let me be very clear that no department was cut out of these discussions. Discussions have been taking place for some considerable time. David Davis himself has been one of those, we have been discussing [the white paper].

“David Davis was discussing with Michel Barnier, Michel Barnier had made clear to him the un-negotiability of the position that we had, so we had a choice.

“We could have said ‘let’s stick where we are and see what happens and risk actually ending up with a chaotic leaving’, which I don’t think is in people’s interests, or we could have said ‘ok, let’s look at moving forward, let’s look at an alternative proposal’, which has been put forward.”

She defended her plans as meeting the red lines she had previously set out, of leaving the customs union, single market and European Court’s jurisdiction, ending free movement and allowing the UK to sign future trade deals.

Theresa May

But Brexiteers disagree that these measures of success will be fully or at all achieved, with Mr Davis having written in the The Sunday Times that it is “dishonest” of Ms May and her aides to suggest there is no alternative.

He wrote: “It is likely that the EU, having achieved a break in the UK’s position, will simply pocket the concessions and ask for more. For that reason alone this is a very bad decision.

“Now some are saying that those on the other side of the arrangement have no worked-out alternative. This is an astonishingly dishonest claim.

“For the past seven or eight weeks my erstwhile department had been working on a white paper based on the prime minister’s speeches. The individual chapters of the paper were being painstakingly agreed with individual departments.”

Steve Baker, Mr Davis’s former right hand man at his department before he also quit in anger over Ms May’s proposals, went further and set out how all of their work had been in vain.

He said in an interview with The Sunday Telegraph that he and Mr Davis are convinced that the prime minister’s plans will not live up to what the people voted for in the 2016 referendum.

The ex-minister added: “We’re back to what civil servants wanted a year ago, the advice they were giving then, of something like the EEA [single market], plus something like the customs union.

“You can’t work with that. How could I possibly stay in government, knowing Dexeu is effectively a Potemkin structure to [distract from] what the Cabinet Office Europe Unit was doing for the prime minister?

“In terms of who ultimately holds the pen on the papers that go to cabinet for collective decision, it has been the Cabinet Office’s Europe Unit, and they have clearly been operating to a different ultimate goal to the one that we were operating too.”

Mr Baker’s return to the backbenches will be a worry for Ms May’s lieutenants, as he was a critical organiser for the highly effective Tory Leave campaign during the referendum, that ultimately led to David Cameron’s downfall.

Mr Davis is expected to speak in the commons this week, while Mr Johnson is expected to publish an article critiquing Ms May’s approach on Monday and also make a speech in the commons early in the week.

Angry Brexiteers believe it may help encourage more backbench Tories to send letters to the 1922 committee – 48 are needed in total – calling for a vote of no confidence in Ms May, something that could lead to a leadership contest.

Asked on Sunday whether she would fight one if it came to it, she pointed out that agitating MPs would have to win a vote of the parliamentary party first, with rebels themselves privately admitting that they may not have the numbers at this point.

On Friday Downing Street issued invites to some MPs to go to Chequers and speak with the prime minister, though only three are said to have gone.