Key Brexiteer Davis Says He Urged May Into Disastrous Election

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David Davis, the U.K.'s former Brexit Secretary, said he asked Prime Minister Theresa May to hold the disastrous 2017 snap election that saw her lose her majority and weaken her hand in Brexit negotiations.

But the leading Brexiteer, who quit in July, distanced himself from May's 2017 campaign, which he called “the worst in modern history” in an interview with HuffPost UK.

Despite a series of polls in early 2017 showing May would increase her majority in parliament in an election, she ultimately lost seats and was forced to go into coalition with Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist Party.

“You get people trying to say snide comments, saying it's your fault. I say, well I recommended a general election, I didn't recommend a horrid campaign,” Davis said in the interview published Thursday, who added that the campaign was too long and hampered by a series of terrorist attacks.

Davis also dismissed the Treasury's analysis of the impact of Brexit and said the people who voted to leave the EU were the real experts. “They know what exactly has happened to their job in the last 10 years and they've got a good idea what's going to happen,” he said.

The leaked Treasury forecasts show Britain would be economically worse off in any Brexit scenario.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jessica Shankleman in London at jshankleman@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson at fjackson@bloomberg.net, Robert Jameson

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