Thread by @APHClarkson

This is basically preparing the ground for Frost blaming everyone else after he experiences the same level of loyalty from Boris Johnson that Dominic Cummings managed to experience

Where Lord Frost blames everyone else for the agreement he negotiated pt. 94

The main goal here from Frost seems to be to largely shift blame for the position of weakness the UK government finds itself in over the Northern Ireland Protocol on to his predecessors under Theresa May. The blame-shifting is the point, the proposals that follow an afterthought

It's either Theresa May's fault, or the UK Parliament's fault, Ireland's fault or the EU's fault.

How Lord Frost expects to be taken more seriously after this beats me

Government that refused to extend transition period that could have given it more time to negotiate stable outcomes expresses frustration at not having enough time to negotiate stable outcomes

Lord Frost shocked at predictable things that were predicted.

The blame-shifting is the point. The proposals that follow are an afterthought.

This section reads like the text you prepare to defend your record at a parliamentary inquiry after you've been sacked

If this document was directed towards the EU to prod it into flexibility over the Protocol, then it would have started here to signal trustworthiness.

Instead it starts with a whiny section directed to its main audience, a shrinking number of Tory MPs still interested in Brexit

The risk with this emphasis is entrenching the island of Ireland as borderless space leads to integration of an all-island economy anyway. That means a key consequence of the GFA that plays out under any protocol deal can be interpreted as a strategic threat by UK governments

Again, this is not what you say if you are trying to convince the EU to become more flexible. This is what you say when you're trying to justify yourself to a domestic UK audience

The lesson from that fiasco was that Dublin shares interests with the UK, can work with it to head off problems and if relations are good can often be the UK's best friend in the EU. Not sure those lessons have been internalised in London

Again setting up the deeper integration of an all-island economy between Ireland and NI as a strategic threat to UK interests. This may be viewed as a short term tactic by Frost's team, but is not helpful in terms of managing NI Unionist expectations

Tying up the fate of the UK government's negotiating position to the electoral trajectory of the DUP seems unwise

Agree that this is a central issue. But the wider questions about why the UK government signed on to an agreement against Unionist objections are not dealt with

Article 16 is mentioned so often at this point that there is a bit of an old man yells at cloud feeling around these threats

"No it's not a banana, it's a gun really, but I'll only pull the trigger later"

These passages are surreal if you think of how the UK government is still delaying import checks on goods from the EU at the English border because it's afraid of disrupting the kind of access to EU goods that English voters consider normal

EU negotiators should be given an award for not going full Avakov on Frost if this is what his tone is during meetings

This is a David Brentism a certain kind of manager thinks looks strong but just signals that he can be rolled

Predictable thing that was predicted surprises UK government

"let's propose that thing they've rejected over and over again. Maybe that will work this time"

If this was 2017 and the UK government had worked to sustain a strong level of EU trust, hey maybe this could even have been agreed by spring 2018.

Would have been a great timeline

So my pet theory is that the UK government will try to camouflage an eventual capitulation over SPS agreements through a proposal presented by Johnson where he claims he has triumphed over the EU by forcing it to sign a Swiss-style SPS Agreement

Yes sensible. So presumably the UK government will do everything it can to build the trust with Brussels and Dublin to make this possible

Laughs in Ukrainian.

And again if this was really about a message towards the EU rather than UK domestic actors, there would have been two or three pages of detail on enforcement, rather than this brief burp of a paragraph

Predictable thing predicted etc etc

UK government creates self-inflicted problem and demands solution from EU

File under stuff that sounds easy on powerpoint

Very specific medicines maybe. All medicines and you wander into smuggling problems very fast. So no.

Looking at this passage again, you really get the sense that Frost has not consulted with anyone involved in law enforcement

Laughs some more in Ukrainian

Because that has always put off smuggling in the past?

5 years into this and the UK government is still in denial about how the EU system interacts with its neighbours

Weaker state demands stronger state adjust its strategic approach in weaker state's interests.

Jeez, what a terrible deal. What kind of UK government would fail to realise that this is how the EU manages its neighbourhood and sign something like this?

Nowhere in these proposals are there concrete frameworks set out for an enhanced role for Stormont to ensure that NI politicians and voters have the final say in shaping their own fate

UK government demands the right to avoid making final decisions.

I suspect that tells us a lot about whether the UK government will delay import checks again on England's border with the EU in October

TLDR "it's not my fault. Blame them"