YouSaid · the spoken record

David Davis

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2024-08-11
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2024-08-11
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  1. “Because it's very, very easy again over time to disappear into the inwardness of the House of Commons and lose track of the outside. And the fourth thing is think three times before you accept an easy solution to anything because they almost always fail.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “God, we started out talking about PhD thesis. The simple thing is when most people come in, they're altruistic. Most people come in they're altruistic and that dies with time for not everybody but about 80%. And it's eroded by careerism and the vagaries of life. And the first lesson is you've got to hang on to the reasons you came in. That's what matters. And you must always revisit that. That's my argument earlier about trying to be logical rather than necessarily part of the pack. Second thing is treat Parliament seriously. Almost nobody does. Almost nobody does. And it's getting weaker. It's actually much weaker now than it was under Thatcher. The third thing is remember who put you there. This is why I started by talking about social mobility meritocracy and so on.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “At the moment, none of them, I've got no dog in this fight because I literally want to see how, I mean, I would go for the one who can actually make a strong argument from dispatch box in these circumstances. There are no more difficult circumstances than now. So that's the test. And I don't like the right-wing grouping. I mean, you know, I think Braverman's done real harm. I think, and on the left, I'm not terribly impressed either, I'm afraid. So I'm going to measure by performance. Well, I think those are my colleagues who want to strike some sort of deal are whistling in the wind. I mean, my comment, which sort of obviously caught people's imagination, was if somebody burns down the golf club, you don't give them membership. That's a symbolic way of characterizing what I want.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I've told him that. I've told him that. I said, well, not a couple of years. I've said to him, look, you must hang around for long enough for us to make an intelligent assessment of who should be the new leader, for us to see what the candidates to succeed you are like in opposition. Because if they're no good at opposition, we'll stay in opposition until we find somebody who is.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, yeah. So those sorts of things, schooling, as I talked about, I think one of the real failures of the Blair times other than the international ones, one of the real failures of Blair Times was the Higher education issue. I think we've got that wrong. I don't like student loans. I don't like tuition fees. I don't like the way we handle that. So the whole, there's a whole series of things of that sort of nature as well.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I think it should take some time doing a lot of rethinking. I mean, you will remember better than anybody the first couple of years in opposition, in a way, waste of time for an opposition trying to talk to public because they're not listening, you know. I think Peter Lilly said it, you know. When we lost in 97, the public would like not to hear him for the next year or so. And we should use that time to think very hard about the whole range of policies, housing policy we haven't touched on. I think our housing policy has been... Weak or cowardly, I think the new Labour housing policy will crash into other issues because ironically it's unplanned. I would go down a route of the post-war housing commissions and whatever, new town commissions and so on.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Well, because he does make simple calls, but I think it's a bit like the last election. I think it's a rejection of what's already there, that it hasn't worked for people for whatever reason. And at the end of the day, democracy is more often than not about what's right for you and your family, right? And if you and your family are suffering, got a bad job, paying too much taxes, can't afford to pay the bills, can't get a place in hospital, your kids can't buy a house. I'm talking British things rather than American things, but all those things tend to make you reject what's there and then go to whatever else is there which seems to meet it. And it's very easy to talk about the answer, as you know, you both know. It's a thousand times easier to talk about the answers than to deliver the answers. And that's where populists have a short-term advantage until the moment they get power.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Well, what we've got at the moment is a mixture of unpopular populism, partially popular populism. No, this is the last thing. I mean, who was it? I'm trying to think who it was. Oh yes, it was Jonathan Dimbleby. I was talking to about assisted dying with one of his big campaigns. I basically persuaded him he had a point, really. And I said to him, somebody had written to me saying 80% of your constituents think this. And he roared with laughter. He said, you're the last person in the world to pay attention to that line of argument. And it's broadly true. I don't pay attention to that line of argument. Populists who are populists because they think it's going to be popular are a disaster generally. They go down the Pujadist route. I don't need to explain to you that, which got a maximum of about 30% of the population ever support some horrific sort of simplification. So no, it's not populist.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Bor Well, don't you remember the phrase in the name of God go? I mean, you know, I wanted rid of him because I just thought he was morally not up to the job, let's put it that way.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “No, no, no, no. But we've had a couple of prime ministers who've been Etonians, Oxbridge, you know, and truth be told, I mean, Cameron was okay domestic, okay domestically. I think it was a disaster internationally, but”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “It could have been Prime Minister in 2010. What Well, I would have taken a meritocratic issue head on. Internationally, I would have been, I don't like foreign wars generally. I don't like wars and foreign wars automatic and tautological. But I didn't approve of the Iraq war, as you know. I didn't approve of what we did in Libya. I actually campaigned to stop us bombing Syria. Not because I think I like the Syrian regime. It's a horrible regime, but we're just going to kill 300 conscripts for no purpose. So it'll be a very different approach on that front. I'd be a bit more assertive with America. I mean, we have tended historically to behave like a colony, frankly. The most recent example, Assange, the extradition treaty, things like that. At home, I tend to be a low-tax Tory, but a balanced book's low-tax Tory, not a speculative, low-tax Tory. That's the sort of picture. But, you know, I haven't thought about this for decades.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Let's be clear. I don't want to be prime. You did want to be primacy. You ran to be leader in 2005. You could have been primacy. You wanted to admit a mistake. There we are. That was a mistake. You ran to me.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Because the teacher's got to teach to a center somewhere. It'll teach to the ones that are in the IQ 100 group, if you like, use an old-fashioned measure. And you could actually change, completely transform the classroom. And that would deal with my problem that I've just talked about, but it also would deal with the young David Davis sitting in physics reading a novel because physics is too easy and he should have done it two years earlier, whatever. So, you know, that would be one area I'd be very keen on. It's bigger than just education”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I know it's not a story, for instance, tells itself. I mean, what happens is governments pick out little pieces that suit them, all right? And they're often legitimate. So, for example, the last government will reasonably point to reading standards, right? Why do they do that? Because they introduce phonics, Git, junior minister probably made a bigger difference than any ministering in government the last decade by just introducing phonics. But that's one piece of the puzzle. It hasn't solved the overall problem. And I think now we're actually at a time where we could do something about that. I mean, the new government's talking about using AI much more, right? Schools, you know, you can easily introduce a system whereby kids get taught absolutely to their own capability. What TENSAP today is the bottom 20%, 30%, 40%, fall off the bottom.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I'm just saying, look, social mobility, meritocracy, if you like, in my view faded over the years. It's not got better in Britain since. And, you know, that's what the story is.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Not in that number, not in the number I was given you stayed much, it's got slowly worse over the years. I don't really know. I mean, so you see.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Tell us. I'd shoot myself. I'm not interested in doing it at this point in time. What would be different? Probably less than you think. More worry about meritocracy. I mean, I think one of the great tragedies of modern times is I grew up. By the time they get to 11, 35% of children, their English and their maths are not good enough to make progress. So in essence, the status failed them by the time they're 11 years old. If you take that number for free school meal kids, i.e. the poorest desire of the population, that's 50%. That is a scandal on a groundscale to me anyway.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I don't really know, but I mean, I've had a number of people come to me after, oh, well, so and so suck this funder or whatever told me not to support you and so on. I wasn't aware at the time. I just blithely ploughed on.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Mixture thing I made a bad speech at Yeah, that was the sort of nub of it, but it wasn't the only part. I mean, the system didn't want me. It's very simple, you know. And there were lots of handicaps along the way. But there we are.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Analytically, she would very often dismiss the conventional wisdom altogether, the sort of what I talk about view as the establishment wisdom, but she dismissed that and start from fundamental principles. So she was an order of magnitude different in her approach, in her analytical capacity, in her methods. If you had to go and see her about something which was in any way controversial, even if she agreed with you, Ian Gow said to me once, explaining when I was about to go and see her and go through this process, my boy, you have to know your arguments. You have to know the footnotes to your arguments, and you have to know the footnotes to the footnotes to your arguments. And if you don't, there'll be a pair of tire tracks across you and should be gone. And he was exactly right. And that's how she assessed policies. It's also how she assessed personalities, why her cabinet was full of the sort of as left-wing people.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “We've got just so many challenges, right? And the last time we were in this position like this was when we dropped Ted Heath and replaced as a leader of party with Margaret Thatcher. At the time it looked like a very long shot. I was a student leader. I'd known her when she was education secretary and I'd been the leader of the Conservative students in the country. And I was one of these people always argued with us. You always picked a fight with me. I never really knew why. But nevertheless, that was the side of affection, I think, on her part. And we wonder whether we'd made a terrible mistake more than once. But she set about these spectacular strategic aims with incredible tactical caution. Something I think Blair copied in a way, you know? And she sort of salami sliced every problem to divide it down, deal with it very...”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “I mean, there's such a gap between Thatcher and Dorest, it's really hard to give a run Yeah, this is interesting, I think, in the context where Rory and I were just talking about because you see, 1975 is the last time I can remember the world being so chancy as it is now. Because we're always right about the security trade interface. That's really important. But we've got that. We've got domestic problems, health service in particular. I mean, West Street, I think, is a good man, but I think he'll still struggle.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Well, I was pausing whether you counted trust in the league at all, really. She was Prime Minister for five minutes. But, I mean, look.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “But that's where it comes from. Most of our traders were Taiwan. That's the first thing to know about this. Secondly, of course, there is an issue there in terms of dealing with free trade in a security challenge world. That is an absolute truth. And no one would go around. And it's not one that you talked about in 2016. Being inside the European Union with our hands fettered is a better way of dealing with that. I'd like to take you back to the 90s when I tried to do it.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yeah, all right. The graphics chips in it will come from Taiwan. There is nowhere else in the world they come from. So you're not decoupling that. You're not decoupling your electronics at all.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Really? How are they decoupling? How are they decoupling? I've just told you. The United States is about to put 60% tariffs in place against China. How are they decoupling?”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Europe is premised to that. It's not an advantage. Listen, on international security, I'm afraid Europe trying to interpose itself as a sort of second NATO is a bad idea, an absolutely bad idea in its day.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “We're in a very exposed position. The hard truth, Rory, is none of it's as bad as it was before 1995, firstly. I mean, you go back. Go back and look, right? There is a different issue, which I think you got a point on, but it's over and above Brexit, right? But in terms of free trade, still the Pacific is going to be a faster growing entity than Europe will ever be, ever again in our lifetime.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “You do. I don't. I mean, and we can talk numbers till the cows come home and bore your listeners and viewers to tears if you want. Because unfortunately, despite myself, I'm expert in these bloody things. The simple truth is whichever way you went was a bet.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “It might be. I mean, look, whichever way you go, you're betting, staying in is a bet as much as leaving is a bet, all right? And staying in, I mean, one of the issues here is we're doing better in aggregate economic terms on technology investment than everybody in Europe put together. We're doing better in growth terms in Germany, France, Italy. We're doing better in export terms than we've ever done before in total terms. Where's the million unemployed that were supposed to be coming? Sorry, that was a CBI bet. The Treasury forecast was 800,000 unemployed. But where's all that? It's rubbish, right? Now, so both sides made mistakes in this argument. No two ways about that. I hope both sides would see that. But the catastrophic collapse hasn't happened.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “But I said, you know, you're not going to be able to do it. Somebody else, you're going to have to give somebody else a power. I go or whoever it is. I wasn't thinking me. I was thinking because I was completely outside that gilded circle. And he said, well, maybe we'll have to go. And I said, no, that's the wrong response. You'll need stability at home while you're doing this because it won't be a straightforward negotiation because the French were already shaping up to be antagonistic, we put it gently. And I had the same conversation again about two weeks before the outcome. And I re-ran my number plucked out of the air, which now would look magical to him, but it was just a guess. And again, he reiterated, well, maybe we'll have to go. And that's probably what was in my mind at the time. So what was the second?”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Because they've been saying it was all the arguments that they are being making would be played back to them in the negotiation. Cameron had already failed. Let me finish. Listen, I've done more European negotiation than probably anybody in the world. Not over Brexit, but prior to that. And Cameron had done a terrible job of the attempted renegotiation of the immigration. Indeed, that's probably what was the mother and father of Brexit was actually that poor prior negotiation. If you got that right, there probably wouldn't have even been a referendum. And if he had, he would have won it.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “And then the meeting, I went back about one month ago, thereabout six weeks ago, same conversation. I said, George, and this is where I think I might have been thinking about on that night, George, you're going to have to decide what you do if you lose. How are you going to do it? You can't negotiate it. Cameron can't negotiate it. You're going to have to give somebody pretty much absolute power to do the negotiation.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “I thought the side of the bus stuff was ridiculous. And a number of us refused to use the 350 million number because we just thought it was misleading. Not a straight lie, but it was bloody misleading. Anyway, I went to see him and I said, you're going to lose. He said, no, we're not. I said, yes, you are. And as you do, I just plucked a number out the air, right? I said, you're going to lose. It's got a big number. It's going to be something like 52.48, you know, and I literally done that, you know, just plucked a number out of the hour. But I wanted to sort of make it crystallize his mind.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Right point one. I mean, I can't remember the phrase, but I can guess what I was thinking because on the night, because the previous three months I've been to see George three times, George Osborne, right? First time I went to see him, I said, George, you're not winning this because it was quite a fierce battle going on. And I said, you're not winning this. I've been out in the country. I mean, I wasn't part of the formal Govrun operation. I just did my own debates and so on around the world.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Again, I can't say WTF? And he sent back an apology note, you know. And that classic, every single blasted regulatory structure was not about protecting you from dying from sugar poisonings as he's holding up his cup, but to protect a piece of Europe. And that's the driving force and the way Europe is organized with big corporate structures. I mean, the corporates all have big presences in Brussels, as you know. I mean, the drive from the airport to the centre is nothing but big corporate signs. And it's the corporates that drive it. It's not even a remotely democratic organization. We've never set up to be.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “That's what they say, but I actually served for five years as a Europe minister, and I watched them being made. I remember having an exam, I mean, I got on very well with quite a lot of my, well, all my colleagues pretty much, one exception, my fellow Europe ministers. And I remember having a really quite sharp exchange with the German. He's a liberal, German liberal, i.e. free trader. And great pals, he was a tornado pilot in the reserve activities. And then the Germans blocked the import of cut flowers, I think, from Morocco. I think it was something like that.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “And as a result, a side effect of this is, it may be by comparison, a trivial side effect, from 72 until 95, our market share, UK market share in Europe, had basically doubled from about 4% to about 8%. From 95 until 2016, it halved again. Now that's actually quite a healthy thing because the world was opening up and the common external tariff barrier was one of the things that came down. But one of the problems was what Europe did was replace the common external tariff barrier with regulatory barriers. And I don't approve of that. I think that's a bad thing. And I think it's going to kill Europe in the longer run.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Well, because my view was that I was not at all sure about the political dimension of the single market. The economic dimensions are fine as far as they went, but the political dimensions of single market I was not sure about. And it was just hunched. There were no facts behind it at this point. But it was a hunch that was sort of proven right later, and that is that the single market became less and less important in the world at large. I mean, it cast your mind back in 1995. We had a spectacular improvement in world trade arrangements, lower tariffs and so on. It's probably the biggest, the most important thing that's happened in the modern history of the world. One and a half billion people came out of poverty, mostly in Asia, came out of absolute poverty, starvation type poverty, off the back of the world trade development, right?”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “I was one of those horrible people who stalled the entire reshuffle for two hours while he tried to find somebody else that Douglas Heard would accept. And Douglas Heard refused. A number of other ministers of state before insisted and I gave in. I did the job.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “And then we started to have a real problem. The parties approached it unpicked in a big way, sometimes for quite reasonable reasons, but sometimes I think just because people fell out with the government. And I was whipped. And I took the view, well, look, the government's decided, this has been elected on this in 1992, and it needs to be delivered. And people deduced from the fact that I was effectively the person who delivered the Maastricht Treaty in Parliament, that somehow I was a great enthusiast for it. And there never was. I thought there were lots of flaws in it. But, you know, that was the decision and it was done. And indeed, when Major made me a Europe minister, I mean, I'm afraid I can't say on a public channel quite what the expletive was, but I said, you must be blank, blank joking. And he said, no, no, no, I want you to do it.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Let me finish the thing. But the other thing is, of course, what you're talking about is again an illusion. In the early major days, the big issue was the Maastricht Treaty, right? And the House of Commons before the 1992 election had sort of signed off the Maastricht Treaty pretty much unanimously, including the Bill Cash as the world, right? Okay. And then when we came back, they did the same again. And I was a whip.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “No, no, no, no, no. I mean, I made the point. Oh, no, look, you sort of make it sound as though I campaigned for the death penalty. I didn't. I said, look, this is not logical.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “What I try and do is if a case is Unpopular And very often it's because it's overgeneralized. This is a very good case in point, it's overgeneralized. People just say, oh, well, I know what I want. I forget all the details. Parliament's there to make sure the details are right, that if you do that, you've got protection for somebody who refuses to carry out particular institutional thing like a marriage. And so contrarian may be, it's more, I just don't... Listen, I don't think my profession is very brave. And so I try not to allow myself to flinch if it gets difficult. I'm not always successful, but I try not to.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “You look at the number of priests who are no longer priests. I'm sorry, that's not right. I mean, and at the time I raised the issue, nobody was interested.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Well, let's deal with gay marriage because it's the most contentious one. The irony people tease me. I mean, I've got a lot of gay friends. They tease me. But you gave the speech at one of the first gay marriages, which I did. My point there was more about people who believe homosexuality is a mortal sin. In which you would find a large number of priests. And we're saying to them, you have to carry out this service.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “But I was making, as the point I was trying to make very badly, because, of course, what happens is the media grab the headline, Davis in favor of the death penalty and pay no attention to the sort of PhD thesis behind it. But there you go.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “Well, the death penalty is always a theoretical position. What I always said was, look, what's wrong with the death penalty is that you get the wrong person, that you execute somebody and then find out afterwards that you made a mistake. And the British judiciary a lot less fallible than we like to kid ourselves. I mean, the whole judicial system is a lot more fallible. So my point was a moral one. If it's right for Obama to sit down every Thursday morning and sign off a dozen people to be killed by drone, possibly surrounded by their family or a wedding party or whatever, if we think that's right, then the people who think that's right ought to say, well, if you could actually be sure of your conviction and there are ways possibly of doing that, then it's logical. That was it.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “So history went one way rather than another. But you see, for me, that was just logical. It doesn't matter. He's an obvious Labour supporter. It doesn't matter that, you know, it's just, it was a logical protection of an institution which mattered.”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, I'm pointing at Alice. I beg your pardon. And I thought, you know, and all my Tory friends, all my fellow MPs were delighted about the demise of the mirror, right? Now this offended my sense of propriety because I think there's always got to be at least two players in a game to work, you know. And so I thought, no, we don't have the mirror to die. It's important to keep it. And I say that went up to him and I said, could you run the mirror? And he started looking. He said, of course I could. And I said, no, no, no, Alice, I don't mean write a 30-page polemic. I know you can do that every day. I said, could you actually run it to get more customers? And he obviously realized I was talking. He looked thought for a second. He said, yeah, I could. I said, well, why don't I buy it for you? And I'll share it and you can run it. Okay. And he sort of looked at me completely perplexed. I said, look, the ball's in your court. If you want to do it, I'll fix it. And then two weeks later, I think Blair...”

    2024-08-11 · The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 89. David Davis: The danger of Farage and the battle for the soul of the Tory Party · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source