How David Frost became Johnson’s Gravedigger

David Frost leaving the government was just a matter of time. He has now been replaced by Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, and a new Brexit assistant minister, Chris Heaton-Harris. Truss was an ardent Remainer until 24 June 2016 and has since turned her coat. Heaton-Harris was an MEP until his election as an MP in 2010. In the European Parliament he was seen as indistinguishable from Ukip and he has campaigned against Europe ever since.

Hopes that Frost’s departure would lead to more compromise and less confrontation with Europe may be premature. Liz Truss is to Boris Johnson what he was to Theresa May — watching and waiting for any opportunity to topple the existing PM.

The Frost departure is a case study for why diplomats and politicians are members of different tribes. He worked for me at least nominally when I was Minister of Europe. David was a member of a team of Foreign Office officials coordinated by the Cabinet Office that did the work on behalf of the British state and the Prime Minister, managing our relationship with Europe.

The key decisions were taken by the Prime Minister but the analysis and words were hammered out by some of the brightest officials in Whitehall. David Frost was one of them. I watched him hunched over his computer in the British suite of offices in Brussels deconstructing EU Commission proposals with forensic precision on behalf of the more senior officials who made final recommendation to the Prime Minister.

He was never in the A team. After a glittering start as a young FCO official when he was made private secretary to the Permanent Under Secretary, the boss of the FCO, he fell off the conveyor belt, which takes the best and the brightest to the highest ambassadorial positions — Washington, Paris, the EU and UN.

His  highest posting was as Ambassador to Denmark, a country which presents no challenges to British diplomacy and for an ambitious FCO official is a backwater’s backwater.

He walked out of the FCO not once but twice over his lack of promotion. I met him regularly when he was Director of the Scotch Whisky Federation and my son was studying at Edinburgh University.

The reason the Scotch Whisky bosses hired him was simple. They believed his diplomatic skills would open markets. Above all they wanted to penetrate the giant Indian market where Indian politicians imposed a 150 per cent tariff on Scotch to protect their own undrinkable product flying under the name of whisky.

David explained to me how he led a delegation to Delhi. The Indians were friendly, served the finest Scottish single malts, and told Frost and the Scotch Whisky Federation they were more than happy to instantly abolish the 150 per cent tariff on Scotch and allow Teachers or Glenfiddich to go on sale to 1.4 billion Indians.

In exchange, said the Indians, they expected the British government to allow visa-free travel to the UK for a billion or more Indians.

Scotch Whisky jaws dropped as they learnt the first lesson of trade deals. They are always political. Frost was never going to get visa-free access to a Britain where a storm of hate was being whipped up against any and all foreigners by the pro-Brexit campaigners headed by one Boris Johnson.

Frost discussed with me his unhappiness with the workings of the European Commission, which he felt held back Britain in adopting regulations that did not always benefit British business.

I heard the same complaint from every single politician or business leader I met in every EU capital. It was Margaret Thatcher after all who did far more than Tony Blair to transfer sovereign national powers to the Commission in order to allow the City and other British firms to do business across Europe.

After the Brexit referendum and Theresa May took her future political assassin, Boris Johnson, into the heart of government as Foreign Secretary, David told me he was going to work for Johnson as a special adviser. My eyebrows must have visibly raised as he said “Come on, Denis. Whatever you think of Boris, it is going to be an exciting time for British foreign policy making and it will be fun to be at the centre.”

I had known Johnson since his entry into the Commons in 2001 and was tempted to tell Frost he was not a man to place much trust in. But I kept my counsel. Now in his “Dear Boris” resignation letter Frost writes: “Together we have put this country onto a new path.”

He never struck me as a big-headed man but something has changed in the aimable, hard-working FCO official I first met.

Frost was the backroom official faced with one of Europe’s most experienced politicians in Michel Barnier, who first held elected office in his twenties and has navigated the treacherous terrain of French centre-right politics ever since. Barnier comprehensively out-negotiated Frost, leaving Britain with a deal that has caused and will keep causing major problems for British firms and citizens for years to come.

In particular the most fanatical of the Northern Irish Brexit factionalists, the DUP, was sacrificed. They believed Brexit would lead to the restoration of a physical border in Ireland, thus abolishing the Good Friday Agreement which the DUP has described as a “capitulation.”

No British government would deliver the entire nation’s future into the hands of the Dublin-hating, homophobic and anti-women ultras of the DUP. It remains a puzzle why David, now Lord Frost, decided to make himself the DUP ambassador to the EU and try and undo the deal he himself negotiated.

Once Joe Biden became president, it was clear that Washington would regard any attack on Dublin and the Good Friday Agreement as a major breach of trust, which would do enduring damage to the UK’s most important bi-lateral relationship.

Lord Frost seemed to have forgotten everything he learnt in his FCO years as he tried to appease the DUP. When last week DUP MPs voted with hard-line Brexit Tory MPs against Johnson’s modest proposals to increase anti-Covid precautions like mask wearing and covid passports it was the last straw for Johnson.

The entire British government could not be the wagging tail of the DUP dog. There would be no more appeasement of the DUP ultras and their champion in Whitehall. Lord Frost, was told to reverse his line and accept the EU positions on the Northern Ireland protocol.

Frost finally learnt what decades of Foreign Office experience can never teach: that politics is not diplomacy and there is no loyalty or enduring friendship at the top of state power.

After North Shropshire he could see Johnson’s days are now numbered. Without Johnson, David Frost has no role in government. He is a peer and now parroting the nostrums of libertarian right-wing economics which won’t work in a country where the state is getting bigger, taxes are rising, and red wall voters are demanding more and more protection. But there will be plenty of directorships on offer and applause from the Brexit Europhobes.

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