Thread by @mikegalsworthy

So David Davis's Brexit strategy appears to rest entirely on regulation in R&D - incidentally, the sector that was most vocally and overwhelmingly *against* Brexit in 2016.

- and which has been hurt hugely by Brexit.

Next time listen to the scientists, @DavidDavisMP.

https://twitter.com/Brexit/status/1360505633909452800

And I have a nice little anecdote on this topic.

*After* the Brexit vote, itwas well known that David Davis was trying to go round scientists and innovators to get their input on what were the *opportunities* of Brexit in their area. AFTER the Brexit vote. Well...

... lots of people were trying to tell him the problems and he wasn't listening to that. He just wanted "opportunities". No-one could think of any.

One famous entrepreneur told me that Davis wanted to visit him - and he turned him down. Why?...

Because, he told me, *everyone* knew that David Davis had a complete deaf ear to all the problems -and only wanted to hear opportunities.

Given that this entrepreneur/innovator couldn't think of opportunities, only problems, he thought there was no point talking to Davis at all.

So now if you read that Bloomberg piece and see Davis say:

"...the Brexiteers were always asking what are the opportunities we could build out of this, and the Remainers, though not all of them, were saying this is a terrible mistake and asking how can we minimize the damage."

Then you now have a bit of context for this statement.

Yes they were looking for opportunities:
1) Because they were trying to justify Brexit post-hoc
2) It's fine to ask about opportunities, but you have to mitigate the downsides too
3) In some areas there were clear downsides

But as we already know, David Davis was in no mood even to acknowledge any downsides, as he famously said on Oct 10th, 2016:

"There will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside"

So his outlook was not a positive one in any reasonable sense, but a denialist one.