David Davis: Jobs, investment and prosperity are being sacrificed on the altar of the Brexiteers' obsessive puritanism

Britain risks becoming an international investment basket base thanks to the way its ministers are carrying on

The now former Brexit Secretary David Davis (PA)

Amid the current Westminster tumult over David Davis finally actually pushing the button on his resignation, this is what’s being pushed to one side: You’re sitting in an international boardroom. You have, let’s say for argument, £20bn at your disposal to invest somewhere. Why on earth would you consider Britain for that?

The answer, of course, is that you wouldn’t. You would instead direct the funds, and the thousands upon thousands of jobs they would support, towards a nation that hadn’t lost its collective head and wasn’t governed by people whom the children you’d find at any half decent day nursery could provide some useful pointers on how to comport themselves.

The evidence for the damage people like the lamentable, and vastly over rated, former Brexit Secretary are doing to the prosperity and future prospects of everyone living in these islands can be seen large in the numbers.

Britain has gone from being the fastest growing economy in the G7 to the slowest, and business investment is falling.

In a recent edition of its Weekly Economics Briefing, Oxford Economics noted a decline of 0.4% in the first quarter of the year.

That is unfortunately the sort of number economists pay close attention to but which the fabled the “man of the street” might look at and say “so what”.

The point that needs to be made is that while the number looks small, it represents a huge amount of money in real terms.

The figures could easily get worse.

As has become very clear in recent days, some very substantial businesses that invest a lot of money here; Jaguar, BMW, Airbus, and more besides, are looking at moving it elsewhere, which could lead to the closure of factories and the loss of tens of thousands of jobs.

But then came Theresa May’s Chequers summit.

The business community initially gave it, and the apparent consensus that came in its wake, a cautious welcome.

Carolyn Fairbairn, the director general of the CBI, spoke favourably of the “cabinet unity” that briefly broke out in an interview with the BBC. She even went so far as to reference “rays of light”.

Of course, May’s proposals haven’t got as far the EU, and there is some doubt about whether they will fly. Nor do they really represent the ushering in of a soft or sensible Brexit, despite the way they have been portrayed.

But Ms Fairbairn correctly identified that what was put on the table was at least prefereable to the crippling uncertainty that held sway prior to the summit.

It might aptly be described as “about the best of a bad job” but business finally had some idea of the direction of travel, and thus the ability to start formulating plans.

There was even a chance that the UK might at some point emerge from its rapidly approaching status as an international investment basket case.

Then Mr Davis threw his late night strop.

It’s always worth remembering something what one of his colleagues from the party’s loopy wing, a certain Boris Johnson, recently said in the wake of the disaffection of the business community, and its lobby groups: “F- business.”

What Mr Davis and his fellow hard line Brexiteers are basically now saying under the cover of a false patriotism is: “F- Britain.” And f- all those trying to make a living in a country their obsessive puritanism would dash onto the rocks.