Yorkshire MP 'drank far too many pints of beer' before being offered Cabinet job

Skipton and Ripon MP Julian Smith, who until February this year was Northern Ireland Secretary, was speaking to BBC Radio Ulster about having to stand down as chief whip under Theresa May, but hoping he would be offered a position in Boris Johnson’s cabinet.

He said that when Mrs May stepped down he “left the chief whip’s office that afternoon, assuming as you must do that is at the end of your time when there's a kind of change in regime but I guess, hoping that there would be a slot or an opportunity”.

He said: “I went to the pub, I don't usually drink during the day, I went to the pub, I drank far too many pints of beer.

“I was meant to be going off to a private dinner, my wife had to ensure that I went to McDonald's first before I arrived at the private dinner, it was that bad, and then I got a call to go back to Downing Street, which was [a] huge relief.

“It was one of the last appointments in the day, but secondly, a huge concern that I was not in the best condition to meet the Prime Minister, [I] went in, admitted I had been to the pub to the Prime Minister and he very kindly offered me this job.”

Mr Smith was widely praised in the role for getting power sharing in Northern Ireland back up and running in January, ending the three-year deadlock caused when Martin McGuinness resigned as deputy first minister in January 2017.

And he told the BBC that was his “first priority”.

He said: “Those early weeks were frustrating because the political parties were really not engaging and there was ebbing and flowing between Shin Fein and the DUP on their levels of enthusiasm.”

At the same time major Northern Irish firms were going under and Brexit negotiations were tense with “the potential and increasing possibility of no deal in Northern Ireland”.

Mr Smith said: “If I'm honest, the real big motivation of this job was to try to build upon what I’d been trying to achieve in the chief whip role, to resolve this Brexit issue in a way that kept the Good Friday Agreement safe.”

He added: “Those 204 days that I spent doing the job were a joy. It was demanding. It was relentless.”