Monday 20 December 2021

Frost jumps ship

To cap off a terrible week for Johnson, we learn that among everything else, his chief negotiator Lord Frost decided to quit about a week ago, something The Mail on Sunday revealed on Saturday night and he has now decided to go early.  He claims it is because of various policies including the response to covid, the cost of reaching net zero and high taxes. He doesn't seem to realise the high taxes are a necessary consequence of shrinking the economy through the Brexit deal he negotiated.

It must be the first resignation in history due to the very policy the resigner has advocated and pursued with relish for at least two years.

Brexit is obviously best viewed from the back seat where you can complain about the direction of travel.  Whoever gets behind the wheel is under a constant barrage of criticism that they are going the wrong way. If Frost himself was prime minister he would be faced with the same unpalatable choices as Johnson. 

There was some speculation that his replacement would be Steve Baker or David Jones but we now know it's Chris Heaton-Harris working under Liz Truss at the Foreign Office. The poisoned chalice has been passed to those two. EU sources have welcomed Frost's departure and of course, many people have speculated that his quitting is more due to the fact that all the new import checks come into force in a few days time and there will be more costs and delays at the ports and a further cut in trade, GDP and tax revenues.

Some have pointed out that every Brexit secretary has either been sacked or resigned. We'll see how long Truss and Heaton-Harris last.

The writer and broadcaster Steve Richards tweeted:

It capped what has been a terrible week for Johnson and it looks set to continue with The Guardian publishing a picture of him drinking wine on the terrace inside No 10 with staff including Cummings in May 2020 when we were all locked down.

The Sunday Times carried a long piece about his troubles yesterday with some disturbing stuff for Johnson to contemplate.  One senior party insider told the ST: “The PM’s power has gone. Now it will either be a slow death or a quick one, but he has already suffered the fatal wound."

Or this:

But for many Tory MPs, there is nothing Johnson can say to arrest his startling decline. “The only statement that would make me happier is if he came out of the blocks and announced he was resigning,” said one senior Conservative MP. “People used to like him because he sprinkled the electoral stardust but he appears to have run out as first evidenced in leafy Buckinghamshire and now rural Shropshire. He is the captain of bullshit.” 

Others think the party will keep him dangling until the spring before getting rid of him.

We learn that when he addressed his MPs last Tuesday before a hundred of them voted against him, he read a prepared statement instead of extemporising as he normally does. His boosters seem to have failed him. One MP who was present said, "It was clear the bull and bluster from Boris doesn’t wash any more.”

They were promised a statement on Friday but only got a testy exchange with Sam Coates at Sky News which if you haven't seen it is an excellent interview:

Another Tory insider said that “no one is loyal to Boris” in Downing Street as so many of his former allies have departed. “Eddie [Lord Udny-Lister], Lee [Cain], Dom [Cummings] have all gone. There are few Johnsonites left.” 

Ian Duncan Smith said: “People in Downing Street should be prepared to take a bullet for the PM but at the moment it appears to be him taking a bullet for them.”

I think the Tory party's problem is that it's Johnson pulling the trigger.

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