David Davis (British politician)

Sir David Michael Davis (born 23 December 1948) is a British politician who served as Shadow Home Secretary from 2003 to 2008 and Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union from 2016 to 2018.

Born to a single mother, Betty Brown, in York on 23 December 1948, David Davis was initially raised by his grandparents.

His maternal grandfather, Walter Harrison, was the son of a wealthy trawlerman, but was disinherited after joining the Communist Party; he led a 'hunger march' to London shortly after the more famous Jarrow March, which did not allow Communists to participate.

His father, whom he met once after his mother's death, was Welsh.

After his mother married Ronald Davis the family moved to London, where they lived initially in a flat in Wandsworth, which Davis has described as "a terrible little slum".

Later, after his half-sister was born, the family moved to a council estate in Tooting, his stepfather being a shop steward at Battersea Power Station.

Davis went to Bec Grammar School in Tooting, and when he left, his A Level results were not good enough to secure a university place.

He subsequently worked as an insurance clerk and became a soldier in the Territorial Army's 21 SAS (Artists) to earn the money needed to retake his examinations.

After doing so he won a place at the University of Warwick, where he graduated with a BSc Joint Hons in Molecular Science and Computer Science in 1971.

While at Warwick he was one of the founding members of the student radio station, University Radio Warwick.

Davis worked for Tate & Lyle for 17 years, rising to become a senior executive, including restructuring its troubled Canadian subsidiary, Redpath Sugar.

While a student Davis was active in the Federation of Conservative Students, becoming national chairman in 1973.

A member of the Conservative Party, he has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Haltemprice and Howden, formerly Boothferry, since 1987.

Having entered Parliament in 1987, he was appointed Europe Minister by Prime Minister John Major in July 1994.

Davis was first elected to Parliament in the 1987 general election as the MP for Boothferry, when he was elected with 55.7% of the vote and a majority of 18,970.

He wrote about his business experiences in the 1988 book How to Turn Round a Company.

At the 1992 general election, Davis was re-elected as MP for Boothferry with a decreased vote share of 54.8% and a decreased majority of 17,535.

Davis was sworn of the Privy Council in the 1997 New Year Honours, having previously been Minister of State for Europe from 1994 to 1997.

He was brought up on the Aboyne Estate, a council estate in Tooting, South West London.

After attending Bec Grammar School in Tooting he gained an MBA at the age of 25 and went into a career with Tate & Lyle.

He held that position until the 1997 general election.

He was subsequently Chairman of the Conservative Party and Shadow Secretary of State for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister under Iain Duncan Smith.

Davis' constituency of Boothferry was abolished in 1997 and replaced with the new constituency of Haltemprice and Howden.

At the 1997 general election, Davis was elected as MP for Haltemprice and Howden, winning with 44% of the vote and a majority of 7,514.

In 1999, Davis presented the Parliamentary Control of the Executive Bill to the House of Commons, in which he proposed to transfer ministerial exercise of the Royal Prerogative to the Commons in the following areas: the signing of treaties; the diplomatic recognition of foreign governments; European Union legislation; the appointment of ministers, peers and ambassadors; the establishment of Royal Commissions; the proclamation of Orders in Council unless subject to resolutions of the Commons; the exercise of the powers of the executive not made by statute; the declarations of states of emergency; the dissolution of Parliament.

Davis had previously been a candidate in the 2001 and 2005 Conservative Party leadership elections, coming fourth and second respectively.

At the 2001 general election, Davis was re-elected as MP for Haltemprice and Howden with a decreased vote share of 43.2% and a decreased majority of 1,903.

He rejected a shadow ministerial position under William Hague, opting instead to chair the Public Accounts Committee.

Between 2003 and 2008 he was the Shadow Home Secretary in the Shadow Cabinets of both Michael Howard and David Cameron.

Davis used his first interview as Shadow Home Secretary in November 2003 to state his personal support for a reintroduction of the death penalty for people convicted of multiple murder "where there is clear evidence and no doubt" surrounding the offender's guilt, citing the Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe and Moors Murderer Ian Brady as examples of offenders who would fall into that category.

This interview came almost 40 years after the abolition of the death penalty for murder.

At the 2005 general election, Davis was again re-elected, with an increased vote share of 47.5% and an increased majority of 5,116 votes.

Davis believed that once the true cost and unreliability of the ID card scheme was explained to the general public they would turn against it.

He was also credited by some commentators with "claiming the scalps" of two Labour ministers, David Blunkett and Beverley Hughes, after both were forced to resign.

On 12 June 2008 Davis unexpectedly announced his intention to resign as an MP and was immediately replaced as Shadow Home Secretary; this was in order to force a by-election in his seat, for which he intended to seek reelection by mounting a specific campaign designed to provoke wider public debate about the erosion of civil liberties in the United Kingdom.

Following his formal resignation as an MP he became the Conservative candidate in the resulting by-election, which he won a month later.

In July 2016, following the Brexit referendum, Davis was appointed by the new Prime Minister, Theresa May, to the new Department for Exiting the European Union (DExEU) as Secretary of State, with responsibility for negotiating the UK's prospective exit from the EU.

He was sidelined mid-way through the talks, with the Prime Minister's Europe Adviser Olly Robbins taking charge of negotiations.

Davis resigned from his government position on 8 July 2018 over May's Brexit strategy and the Chequers plan.

Following his resignation, the DExEU junior minister Steve Baker and the Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson also resigned.