Cabinet row erupts as Brexit Secretary David Davis gets behind The Sun’s campaign to bring back blue British passports

A CABINET row exploded last night after David Davis threw his weight behind bringing back our famous blue passports.
The Brexit Secretary is the first Cabinet Minister to signal support for The Sun’s campaign to revert passports back to the original colour ditched in 1988 for EU-burgundy.

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But it puts him at odds with Home Secretary Amber Rudd who dismissed the move.
Blue passports were phased out in 1988 after a long-running battle with Brussels.
We were the last of the then-EU nations to switch to burgundy having had instantly recognisable blue travel documents since 1921.
Mr Davis delighted fellow Tory MPs at their party conference in Birmingham by saying: “I liked my old blue passport”.
In September Home Office Robert Goodwill confirmed: “We are considering potential changes to the UK passport after the UK has left the European Union.
He insisted that no “decisions about what a future UK passport might look like” had yet been made.

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But this high level support from the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union is a major breakthrough for The Sun’s campaign.
Tory MP Jacob Rees Mogg said: “The return of a blue passport is of great symbolic importance and symbols have a great role to play in a nation.”
He added:  “A policeman's helmet gives security, Big Ben calls out democracy, a judge's wig the rule of law.
“So a proper passport heralds a free and independent state.”

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Home Secretary Amber Rudd jokingly suggested she may launch an online competition to design a new passport for when we quit the EU.
Asked whether the blue passport could return when Britain leaves the EU in 2019, she laughed: “Is that the most pressing, inciting question about passports?”
She then signalled she may be willing to launch a passport design competition – but that she warned it must not have the same outcome as the notorious Boaty McBoatface ship naming saga.
 “We could have select suggestions, I think,” she told a meeting on the fringes of the Tory party conference.