The ex-chief of staff of British Brexit minister David Davis, James Chapman, lashed out at his former boss on Twitter on Wednesday, calling him lazy, a liar and clueless.
Davis “has been working three-day weeks since day one,” Chapman added on his Twitter account. “He lies” on Brexit and “he and the PM [Prime Minister Theresa May] don’t have the first idea what they are doing”.
Chapman, a former political journalist at the Daily Mail in London who held the post of chief of staff from the referendum on Britain’s exit from the EU, Brexit, on 23 June 2016, until he resigned in June 2017. In a string of tweets, he also included anecdotes to support his claims.
“Someone should ask DD [David Davis] about the time he told horrified Slovakian PM ‘If you think we are going to pay so you can sell us your cars, forget it’!” he wrote. “Someone should ask DD about the time he called [EU Brexit negotiator] Michel Barnier by mistake thinking he was talking to a far-right friend.” Chapman also said the minister had once asked his staff to programme the number of far-right British leader Neil Farage onto his telephone.
The string of tweets accompanied the launch on Tuesday by Davis of a document advocating a transitional customs union after Brexit. Responding to the attacks, the Minister said “James was a Remainer [someone opposed to Brexit] from the start, but he did a good job; he was a very good chief of staff. I’m not going to criticize or argue with him.”
