A former aide to Brexit Secetary David Davis has accused the Cabinet minister of being workshy, inept and a liar.
In a string of tweets, James Chapman even hinted his ex-boss could be “insane”, and suggested he had behaved “inappropriately” towards Labour’s Diane Abbott in a Commons bar.
Chapman, who has until now been careful not to directly criticise Davis, let rip on Twitter after the Brexit Secretary said on TV that his former chief of staff had always been “a Remainer”.
The former aide hit back that Davis had been “working a three day week” ever since Theresa May handed him the plum role as the minister in charge of Brexit.
He added that Davis and May “don’t have the first idea what they are doing” and that his ex boss was lying when he claimed the UK will “probably” not have to pay to access the EU customs union in any interim trade deal.
Chapman further added that Davis ordered civil servants to put Nigel Farage on “speed dial” on his official government mobile.
The ex-aide also referred to an incident earlier in the summer when Davis confronted Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott after a Brexit vote, accusing him of “bullying” the Labour minister and of “inappropriate” behaviour.
He retweeted an infamous image of Davis’s 2005 leadership campaign in which two women were dressed in ‘DD for me’ t-shirts.
And he took aim at the BBC too, claiming that Radio 4 Today programme presenter John Humphrys went on holiday with Davis.
But the claim was swiftly rebutted by Sarah Sands, the new editor of the Today programme.
Chapman, who was the Daily Mail’s political editor before working for George Osborne and then Davis, has in recent weeks become one of the most strident anti-Brexit voices online.
He has been calling for the creation of a new political party, ‘the Democrats’, to reverse Brexit and last week lashed out at the Government over its plans to quit the EU by 2019.
Davis, who on Tuesday published the latest ‘position paper’ on UK trade plans post-Brexit, spoke for the first time publicly about his former aide.
He told ITV’s Good Morning Britain that Chapman had been an effective adviser but suggested his personal opposition to the UK quitting the European Union had never wavered.
Davis later told LBC radio that he did not want to engage in criticism of his former aide.
“James, when he came to me, he was a Remainer, we knew that. But he did a good job as chief of staff. I am not going to criticise him. I don’t do that, I’m afraid,” the Brexit Secretary said.
As part of a raft of rapid-fire Tweets, Chapman also hit out at his former employer the Daily Mail.
He tweeted Daily Mail writer Sarah Vine, the wife of Cabinet Minister Michael Gove, claiming the couple had been cut off by former friends David and Samantha Cameron, since the Brexit vote.