BRITAIN'S Brexit secretary David Davis has spoken of how Friday's last-gasp Brexit deal was reached because "Wednesday wasn't long enough for the DUP to sort themselves out."
Prime Minister Theresa May's hopes of getting the green light for trade talks were torpedoed at the start of last week by the DUP, which props up her government, over concerns that plans for the Irish border could lead to a new frontier being drawn in the Irish Sea.
Mrs May was forced into a week of negotiations with the DUP, the Dublin government and the EU before finally getting a dramatic last-minute deal on Friday, paving the way for trade talks.
Mr Davis said the phone call Mrs May had with DUP leader Arlene Foster last Monday, which appeared to undo the planned deal, was "a lot shorter than people say", and revealed his patience was tested by events.
The Brexit Secretary told LBC radio: "What's the requirement of my job? I don't have to be very clever, I don't have to know that much, I do just have to be calm.
"And that did test the calmness a bit, a little bit.
"But we had to pick another day and we looked at Wednesday but Wednesday wasn't long enough for the DUP to sort themselves out so we made it Thursday, Friday morning."
Mr Davis also said he does not believe economic forecasts as he discussed the furore over the British government's failure to formally assess the likely impact of EU withdrawal on different sectors of the UK economy.
He was accused of misleading Parliament last week after admitting no impact assessments had been made because their usefulness would be "near zero" due to the scale of change which Brexit is likely to cause.
The Brexit secretary said: "In the last 18 months I've talked about impact here and there, but an impact statement, this is a thing that the Labour Party have been going on about, an impact statement has got a proper meaning in Whitehall, there's a definition of it and so on, including things like forecasts.
"Now I don't actually believe economic forecasts, they have all been proven wrong, I mean look at all the ones about Brexit.
"So what we do is we look at what we call a sectoral analysis which is the size of the thing, the size of the industry, employment levels, how much is dependent on Europe, how much is dependent on European regulations, how much opportunity there is in other countries.
"When you know those things, you know what you need to know."
Mr Davis dismissed concerns that a soft border between the UK and EU on the island of Ireland could encourage people smuggling.
"That would be a very hard way to get into Britain, you'd have to be a fairly dumb people smuggler to come in that way," he said.
"Something like 50 million people go through the country every year - tourists and so on - you go to Heathrow, look at it, there's huge numbers of people, it's much simpler to come in and pretend you're a tourist than to take a sort of elliptical route like that."
The Brexit secretary said Britain would have talks with the Dublin government about sharing security data to ensure illegal immigrants do not exploit the soft border.
The spat between Dublin and London emerged as Mrs May was chairing the first Cabinet meeting on Monday since her pre-dawn dash to Brussels to agree a way forward with European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker last week.
With some Tory Brexiteers expressing concern that the UK has agreed to pay a £39 billion exit bill, let the European Court of Justice have a legal role for a further eight years, and pledged the full alignment on Irish border issues, the PM is saying she has been consistent in her approach.
In a statement to the House of Commons on Monday, Mrs May is expected to say: "This is not about a hard or a soft Brexit.
"The arrangements we have agreed to reach the second phase of the talks are entirely consistent with the principles and objectives that I set out in my speeches in Florence and at Lancaster House.
"I know that some doubted we would reach this stage.
"Of course, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed.
"But there is, I believe, a new sense of optimism now in the talks and I fully hope and expect that we will confirm the arrangements I have set out today in the European Council later this week.
"In doing so we can move on to building the bold new economic and security relationships that can underpin the new deep and special partnership we all want to see.
"A partnership between the European Union and a sovereign United Kingdom that has taken control of its borders, money and laws once again."
Former Conservative party leader Iain Duncan Smith said that while Mrs May's agreement was "not ideal" it was an improvement in the state of the negotiations.
However he said the deal was a draft that "simply gets us through the first round".
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the leading Brexiteer said: "Most importantly, though, all this can be torn up tomorrow, because 'nothing is agreed until everything is agreed'.
"This is in effect an indicative text, whose purpose is to get us to the next phase of discussions."
Labour's shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer said Mrs May "cannot now be spooked by the extreme Brexiteers in her party".
"The agreement last week should be treated as binding and was expressly intended to be part of the Article 50 withdrawal agreement," he told the Guardian.
"Labour will not allow any rowing back on promises made that would put the union or the peace process at risk."
The remaining EU27 countries will decide at a Brussels summit later this week whether trade talks with the UK can finally begin.
Comments by Mr Davis that Britain would not pay its £39 billion exit bill unless it gets a trade deal are likely to have caused disquiet on the Continent.
