Theresa May and David Davis in hour-long Brexit showdown during ‘morning of madness’

DAVID Davis tore into Theresa May’s Brexit strategy yesterday in a morning of drama that saw the Prime Minister come within minutes of her government collapsing.

The pair met for an hour-long showdown in the Prime Minister’s ornate wood-panelled Commons office after a year of simmering tension with her Brexit Secretary.

And Mr Davis took the chance to let rip - raging about the direction in which her EU exit strategy was heading.

After months of keeping quiet at being sidelined by civil servants, Mr Davis called time on “Brexit backsliding”.

Although he had not explicitly threatened it, Mrs May sensed the Cabinet heavyweight was on the verge of walking out - and could take his Brexit junior ministers with him.

Such a dramatic explosion would almost certainly have triggered a meltdown across Whitehall that would terminate Mrs May’s weak and wobbly grip on power.

And she had to act fast to fix the mess - as she was due to jet off to Canada hours later to hobnob with global leaders at the G7.

“She did what she always does when her back is against the wall, she fudged it”, said one government insider.

The self-described Tory hardman turned fire on Mrs May's delayed blueprint for what the future relationship with Brussels will look like, and took aim Mrs May’s civil service exit guru Oliver Robbins.

Mr Davis wants the 150-page White Paper published before a crunch meeting of EU leaders in two weeks time to scotch claims from Brussels that the UK does not know what it wants from exit talks.

And he fears his vision of Brexit had been watered down by Mr Robbins who had blocked the publication by demanding it be rewritten a fifth time.

His furious rant was the culmination of months of bitter infighting between the pair but sources insisted Mr Davis had stopped short of calling for Mr Robbins to be sacked.

And Mr Davis also vented his frustration at the messy “backstop” option that would see Britain tied to Brussels indefinitely until a border solution is found.

Despite it being offered in a late night deal last December to break the Brexit negotiations deadlock with Brussels, six months later the issue was still a running sore in Westminster.

After days of refusing to include an explicit time limit on the fall back option - Mrs May finally caved in after emergency meetings yesterday morning with Trade Secretary Liam Fox and Boris Johnson.

Trusted spinner Robbie Gibb was dispatched from No10 to the Brexit department to find a form of words that were acceptable to both sides.

But she only gave an inch - agreeing to write in new detail about a time limit ending on December 2021.

But it was quickly pointed out that the words had no legal binding and were a mere aspiration.

And nobody resigned.

By the end of the day both sides were declaring victory - but in reality both the PM and Mr Davis have been left badly bruised by the row.