On what would prove to be his penultimate day as Boris Johnson’s Brexit minister, during which he spoke with his EU counterpart, Maroš Šefčovič, for one last time, David Frost was disappointed.
He was disappointed with the state of the talks over the post-Brexit arrangements for Northern Ireland. He was disappointed with the EU for failing to finalise the UK’s involvement in its €95.5bn Horizon Europe research and innovation programme.
It is understood that he was also pretty disappointed with those who had suggested that he had done a great big U-turn in recent days on Britain’s approach to the European court of justice in Northern Ireland. Actually, he had done it in the House of Lords the previous month but no one had been listening. Such is the lot of our peers of the realm.
But, according to Frost’s letter of resignation, when it came two days later, he had become mostly disappointed with two big government policies of late: the reinstatement of Covid restrictions and the hiking of taxes in order to pay the country’s way out of the pandemic.
These issues had clearly been on Frost’s mind for a while. He had indicated his displeasure over the government’s economic policies in a recent speech in which he had echoed Margaret Thatcher’s famous Bruges speech. “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the European Union from Britain with Brexit, only to import that European model after all this time,” he said.
But those who have known Frost well over the years suggest that there may have been an overarching disappointment bearing down on the ministerial mind.
He was the prime minister’s man. Brought into government by him from relative obscurity. Promoted by him to the cabinet. When Frost had decided that he did not want to be national security adviser, a position he had been due to take up at the start of the year, Johnson had acquiesced, giving him his preferred job leading the way on EU issues.
But, today, the prime minister is in trouble, both within his parliamentary party and among the membership. Frost is an ambitious man, with every reason to believe he should have a political career beyond this administration. His approval ratings among Conservative members ranks behind only the foreign secretary, Liz Truss. But he remained, until today, all too identifiable with the prime minister.
Frost’s resignation letter, while not overtly critical of Johnson, did quite a bit to correct that. “I hope we will move as fast as possible to where we need to get to: a lightly regulated, low-tax, entrepreneurial economy, at the cutting edge of modern science and economic change,” Frost wrote. Sources helpfully informed the Mail on Sunday that such concerns chimed well with the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, who Frost had explicitly namechecked and praised in his November speech.
Those who have worked alongside Frost, 56, who is married to Harriet Mathews, the Foreign Office’s deputy political director, describe him as a “workaholic” and a “machine”. This was highlighted recently by his late-night Twitter spars with Ireland’s foreign minister, Simon Coveney.
Part of Frost’s drive, it is suggested, has been a determination to prove his naysayers wrong. His solid career in the Foreign Office had culminated with his appointment as ambassador to Denmark, before returning to Whitehall as director of strategy.
He quit in 2013 to become chief executive of the Scottish Whisky Association, a well-known outlet for those of a certain standing leaving the Foreign Office. But there appears to have been a sense of unfinished business.
In a speech in Brussels at the start of the negotiations over the trade deal, he referenced his old boss, the former head of the diplomatic service, Lord Kerr, who had suggested that Frost was merely “good at doing what he is told”. It was, Frost had said in response, “as if no member of the UK foreign service could possibly have the same view of the European Union as our current prime minister without having been instructed to do so”.
It may be the end of “the Great Frost”, as Johnson referred to his minister, in the negotiating rooms in Brussels for now. But Frost is a man on a mission. And you do not work within, and in opposition to, the EU institutions without learning a little about strategy.
