Thread by @NashSGC

Some thoughts on David Frost following his elevation to the Cabinet, why he is perfectly qualified for the job and why that doesn’t mean relations with the EU will improve or that the flaws in the TCA that so many businesses have been pointing out will go away.

First, his qualifications. No-one is better placed on Whitehall to manage future relations with the EU.

This isn't because Frost will crisscross the continent, repairing relations, & befriending leaders from Berlin to Bucharest, & Rome to Riga, but because future relations with the EU will be confined to the frameworks set out in the TCA & the Protocol, treaties Frost negotiated.

I suspect that no-one on Whitehall knows these better than Frost, and certainly no-one around the Cabinet table. Indeed, he is probably the only one around the Cabinet table to have read them.

Add to this that Frost will likely have in support the same team that he drew upon during the negotiations. Many in that team are longtime EU specialists. They know their stuff, & like Frost, know the deal they just negotiated back-to-front.

So those with the required experience and skill-set are rightly being tasked with managing UK/EU future relations. But this does not mean that those relations will improve anytime soon.

This is partly to do with Frost (he has taken a tough approach in negotiation & shown he wants to play it hard), but mainly because of the way the new relationship came about & has been constituted.

The new U.K./EU relationship is confrontational by nature. The purpose of Brexit was not to usher in a new era of UK/EU cooperation, but to cut the U.K. free of the EU and allow it to do whatever it takes to outcompete, outgrow & out do the EU.

As Pascal Lamy said just over a year ago, the consequence of Brexit will be that the U.K. and EU enter into a new geopolitical & geo-economic rivalry. I agreed with his assessment then and still do now.

Lamy also said that that rivalry would be couched in friendly, diplomatic language. Recent events & 4 yrs (or is it 4 decades) of mud slinging, suggest this won't be the case. Despite Frost’s diplomatic background, I don’t think he is the man to make this prediction come true.

And what about the hopes of business. There is real desperation in many sectors. The consequences of leaving the customs union & the single market has hit them like a slap in the face, & they can’t quite believe that what they are experiencing is what government had in mind.

Many businesses hope that the current difficulties are the result of a mistake that can be resolved. But it's not a mistake, and most of these difficulties only go away if the U.K. goes back to the negotiating table, requests more access & sacrifices some sovereignty in return.

Frost knows this, and he is not going to do it. The deal is the deal. Frost is not going to start building on it as some in the business community want. He is only in the business of implementing it.

And the fact that Frost sits in the Lords as an unelected peer, helps make him more immune to the pressures the business community might apply to other Ministers sitting in the Commons.

So Frost is the right man for the job, but that job is not to build friendly relations with the EU, or deepen economic ties, it is to implement the deal, and hold the line on sovereignty.