As I promised yesterday, I watched the appearance of Frost and Gove at the Future Relationship committee which took place on Wednesday. I didn't watch the whole thing but if you have a mind to the episode is HERE. It was by video conference and Hilary Benn's microphone didn't work very well so some questions you can't hear properly. A lot of it was quite mundane anyway, but a couple of things stood out. They were asked about progress in recruiting the 50,000 customs agents.
When Gove last appeared before the committee in April, Benn put it to him that 50,000 agents would be needed, the figure being an industry estimate that he didn't dispute. The newspapers assumed this was a reasonable estimate and wrote about 50,000 'form-fillers'.
But on Wednesday Gove said they were working with the industry to find out the actual number of forms required and the number of agents needed and he was "confident" they would be ready in time. This is amazing to me. After almost four years we are just seven months from a cliff edge and the government does not even know how many agents will actually be needed! Hilary Benn said the Cold Chain Federation, road hauliers specialising in chilled and frozen logistics had said recently the UK was "hopelessly ill prepared" but he just shrugged it off.
Can anybody be sure that we will be ready at all points of entry for a massive increase in paperwork? I think it is an absolute certainty that we will not.
The next point of note came from Peter Bone who was intrigued by Frost's status. Frost is not a civil servant or a minister and Bone did not seem happy about it. He asked who Frost reported to, the PM was the answer and the cabinet committee responsible for the future relationship. Asked how often he spoke to the PM, Frost said about every two weeks. This sounds incredible to me. Johnson is not a details man anyway and he is clearly not in close contact with chief negotiator.
Next, Bone asked what happened when political decisions were needed/ Frost said they were at a 'very early stage' and still exploring each other's position - this is just days before a decision needs to be made on extending the transition - and therefore there had been no need for political input.
Bone then got onto Dominic Cummings, who he said had described himself at the weekend as a sort of 'gatekeeper' to the PM, as Bone put it. How often did Frost speak to Cummings? Now it was a bit more vague and we didn't get a clear answer but it was far more frequently than with Johnson. What Peter Bone will make of it I am not sure. The point he was driving at was that it seemed British government policy on the future relationship was in the hands of two unelected special advisers.
Bone has already called for Cummings to step down and I can't see this changing anytime soon.
The Spectator, no friend of the left, owned by the Barclay brothers - who own The Telegraph - and edited by Fraser Nelson published several articles last weekend about Cummings, none of them supportive. This week we got another article, by Alex Massie: Boris isn't fit to lead.
Massie says:
"But no mere advisor should ever be thought indispensable and any prime minister so wholly dependent on a single advisor, no matter how brilliant he or she may be, is a weak one. If Boris Johnson cannot function without Cummings he is not qualified to be prime minister. The price of defending Cummings is admitting Johnson’s inadequacy."
And:
"Because, in the end, this is not a story about Dominic Cummings but, rather, one about the Prime Minister. Even if we concede the possibility that he has not fully recovered from his own recent illness and, by making that concession, are tempted to afford him a greater measure of the benefit of the doubt than is traditionally granted to prime ministers, it remains mightily difficult to construct a coherent defence of the Prime Minister’s recent actions.
"There is little escaping an obvious reality: this is a prime minister without clothes. The country can see this, even if cabinet ministers and Tory MPs pretend not to. He is what he is and he is not up to the job. In sunnier times this might not matter so very much but these are not the best of times and, right now, a significant portion of the Prime Minister’s responsibilities are wrapped up in his ability to inspire confidence. He is the captain of the ship and voters are entitled to think he is paying attention".
Johnson is what we all knew that he was last year. The Tory party knew but thrust him forward as their man. The voters trusted the party but now we see what he is - an inadequate at a time when the nation needs a real leader and a thinker.
We are ill prepared in more ways than one.
