For the good of the country, Theresa May needs to remove David Davis as chief Brexit negotiator

As bad luck would have it, Michel Barnier has exactly the same central flaw as his counterpart Davis – and that has made the Brexit negotiations almost impossible for everyone involved

Why did Theresa May appoint Davis as both home-facing Brexiteer and UK representative at the negotiating table? (Reuters)

Was it just the latest squall in the UK government’s long passage towards a negotiating position, or a hissy fit on the part of David Davis, the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator? Perhaps even a bit of both?

It is hard to tell. But whatever it was seems now, after a fevered 24 hours, to be over. The government rushed out its plan for future trade with the EU, saying (at the very end) that, in the absence of any formal agreement on new customs arrangements, any continuation of the status quo would last no more than an extra year. This so-called back-stop would, in other words, have a time limit, and a pretty short one at that.

Such minimal fine-tuning was apparently enough for the resignation talk to subside – which perhaps illustrated how shallow, and how much of a ploy, it really was. But this is, in a way, unfortunate, because the issues at stake are still live.

Deep down, Brexiteers fret that the prime minister is not, and has never really been, on their side, and will weasel through a deal that falls well short of the clean break with the EU that they demand. The back-stop, as a temporary solution to the conundrum of the Ireland border, they fear, could became a non-solution that leaves the UK partially shackled to the EU forever. And what if, after the back-stop year has passed, there is still no permanent customs agreement in sight? What price, the supposed clarity of intention and timescales David Davis has secured?

The plain truth is that the government is riven with factionalism on Brexit, there is no trust or team spirit, and the chief negotiator is at one end of a spectrum of views. It might have looked a wise move at the time for Theresa May to appoint leading Brexiteers to frontline Brexit roles – not least because it helped compensate for her own preference for Remain. If the thinking was sound, however, the particular division of portfolios has failed.

And perhaps the biggest misjudgement was the appointment of David Davis to combine the posts of secretary at the Department for Exiting the EU and chief negotiator. At very least, those two functions should have been distinct: as the one faces towards Westminster and the home Brexit constituency; the other faces Michel Barnier across the table in Brussels.

That there were already difficulties was evident when the prime minister transferred Oliver Robbins, the chief civil servant in Davis’s department, to what was described as a coordinating position at the Cabinet Office. But she did not complete the job by transferring Davis to another department or, as a simpler solution, replacing him as chief negotiator.

Now I don’t want to cast aspersions on David Davis. He is a thoroughly admirable character. His career as an SAS officer testifies to all sorts of personal qualities – from courage to resourcefulness to resilience – that set him apart. He is a man of great personal principle, as when he resigned his seat in 2008 over what he saw as unacceptable anti-terrorist legislation. And his support for Brexit surely reflected something of the same independence of mind, while his sense of principle and responsibility may help explain why he accepted a leading position in the government charged with negotiating the terms.

But being an admirable character is not the same as being an accomplished or effective negotiator. In many ways, you could argue that many of Davis’s own qualities – consistency, principle and practicality – almost militate against his succeeding in such a role. Not only that, but he is up against a master of the art in Michel Barnier, the French chief negotiator for the EU, whose charm, guile, and long experience of delicate bargaining are some of the reasons why he was chosen for the job.

As bad luck would have it, however, Barnier has one flaw as a Brexit negotiator, and it is one he shares with Davis: he appears as French as Davis appears English, and neither evinces much cultural sensitivity or familiarity with how the other side actually thinks. The differences between the French and the English can be hugely productive; they can also produce a comprehension gap that is one of the widest in Europe. At times, with Barnier and Davis, even the translation has left something to be desired.

To give them their due, both chief negotiators have striven valiantly to show good humour and get along. But it is hard not to believe that if one or the other, or both, were more internationally attuned – a latter-day Douglas Hurd, a Nick Clegg, dare I say a Boris Johnson, for the UK – the talks would have progressed with fewer misunderstandings than they have, regardless of what was going on in the respective capitals.

Not that the negotiators, of course, are untethered operators. And from a plethora of Brexit discussions I have attended in London and elsewhere in recent months, one message has come through loud and strong. It is that responsibility for the snail’s pace of the Brexit talks lies not in Brussels or anywhere else in what we must now call the EU27, but in the UK, which has still – a full two years after the referendum, and more than a year since Article 50 was invoked – not managed to finalise its negotiating position.

But the choice of negotiators matters. It is partly about personal relations across the table, but also because the job – as with ambassadors – entails not just talking, but assessing the mood and communicating back. It is understandable that Theresa May would be reluctant to change her chief negotiator at this stage. The more time goes on, the more such a move would smack of weakness and divisions in London.

That said, the weakness and divisions are there for all to see. How much is there to lose? The latest spat has shown David Davis’s leverage at home. So leave him at the Department for Brexit, accept his resignation as chief negotiator on a point of principle (a pity that the most recent opportunity was missed), and send someone else to joust with Michel Barnier in Brussels.

That someone – and it doesn’t have to be a serving politician – needs a stellar command of French (and France) and firsthand experience of how the EU really works. Then let’s see how far the negotiations are really stuck, what compromises can be made (by our side, too), and try to arrange what now seems to be the UK’s inevitable departure with common sense and, above all, good grace.