Former prime minister says Brexit has ‘turned out less badly than we first thought’

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

David Cameron has called Brexit a “mistake, not a disaster” in unguarded comments caught on camera at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

The former prime minister said leaving the EU had not been as catastrophic as predicted. Speaking to the steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, Cameron said the process of leaving the EU was “still going to be difficult”.

In footage from Channel 5 News, Mittal told Cameron he had heard “everyone is talking about Brexit”.

“Yes, well I know,” Cameron replied. “It’s frustrating. As I keep saying it’s a mistake, not a disaster. It’s turned out less badly than we first thought.”

Cameron’s comments are likely to provoke some enjoyment from Brexit-backing former colleagues. As prime minister, he described a leave vote in the referendum as “the gamble of the century” for the predicted economic impact of leaving the EU.

The former Ukip leader Nigel Farage tweeted the video of Cameron caught on camera, with the caption: “Busted.”

It is not the first time Cameron has been accidentally caught on broadcast microphones being indiscreet.

In 2015, ahead of a speech in Leeds on regional devolution, the then-prime minister joked: “We just thought people in Yorkshire hated everyone else, we didn’t realise they hated each other so much.”

The previous year, Cameron was forced to apologise to the Queen after being recorded telling the former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg that she “purred down the line” when he informed her that Scotland had voted against independence.

Cameron is attending the meeting of global financial leaders in the Swiss ski resort this week, where Theresa May is set to meet Donald Trump. Trump will be the first sitting US president to attend in person since Bill Clinton in 2000.