Lord Frost denies that he is relaunching yesterday’s

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Protecting Britain’s autonomy means a thin trade deal and corporate pain, for which Lord Frost has offered some apologies. Secure the constitution, its logic runs, and prosperity follows. He doesn’t seem embarrassed to break a deal on Northern Ireland that the Prime Minister has signed. According to him, the deal was a flawed way to an end – to save Brexit – and one that came unraveling surprisingly quickly. He also doesn’t view his terms, which create a trade barrier along the Irish Sea, as his fault. He argues that negotiations were hampered from the start after Theresa May, Mr Johnson’s predecessor, gave too much, and the Europeans exploited the chaos in the British Parliament to strike a lopsided deal. He sees these years as an epic humiliation caused by too comfortable and too needy British negotiators. He tells his staff to defend their country and to repeat their demands until they sink.

Lord Frost is gentle and courteous, and a keen student of Flemish history. But noble ends justify crude means, say his allies. Only if Britain threatens to blow up talks or tear up deals will the Europeans give in. “He doesn’t see job function email database negotiations as’ how to write nice press releases that don’t add much,” said a former official. Regarding clause 16, “he is absolutely ready to pull the trigger”. His cabinet colleagues are more disgusted. No one knows who Mr Johnson will be paying attention to.
battles in order to stir up Eurosceptic voters. It was only if the deal was made, he argued, that the new relationship with the EU so desired by his fellow Europhiles to flourish. But his approach excites his party, disillusioned by the Prime Minister’s trial and error.

A survey of Conservative members by Conservative Home, a website, ranked Lord Frost as the second most popular Cabinet member behind Liz Truss, the Foreign Secretary. Mr Johnson was second from the bottom. Lord Frost delighted them with a speech on November 22 in which he warned against wasting Brexit by missing a chance to abandon the European social model and embark on sweeping regulatory reforms. Among his fans on the back benches is David Davis, who has served as Ms May’s Brexit secretary. Things would have turned out a lot better if Lord Frost had been in charge from the start, he says.

Born in Derby and educated at a private school in Nottingham before a long but relatively unglamorous Foreign Office career, Lord Frost is more like the middle-class provincials who predominate on the Conservative benches than his native-born boss.