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British Brexit Minister David Frost has resigned over the disappointment of Boris Johnson’s government leadership, and has dealt a severe blow to the troubled prime minister as the Omicron variant spreads across the country.
Frost’s resignation, the key architect of Johnson’s troubled Brexit strategy, raised doubts about the future tone of the European Union’s divorce and the immediate course of talks on Northern Ireland. He also added to the confusion of the Johnson Conservative government.
Frost said he was sure Brexit was safe, but said he was concerned about the direction of the government.
“You know my concerns about the current direction of travel,” Frost told Johnson in a letter released on Downing Street on Saturday.
“I hope we can get to where we need to be as soon as possible: a lightly regulated, low-tax entrepreneurial economy that is at the forefront of modern science and economic change.”
His resignation was reported for the first time by The Mail on Sunday, driven by Johnson’s stricter restrictions on COVID-19, but also by a broader disagreement over tax increases and the cost of environmental policies.
Frost said he agreed to leave with Johnson earlier in the month in January, but as his move was leaked, it should have taken effect immediately.
“We also need to learn to live with COVID,” Frost said. “I hope we can get back on track soon and not be tempted by the coercive measures we’ve seen elsewhere.”
Johnson said he was sorry to receive Frost’s resignation.
‘Jokes’
The departure of the UK’s chief Brexit negotiator comes with warnings from some of Johnson’s Conservative MPs that he needs to improve his leadership or take on a challenge.
Johnson, who won a landslide election victory in December 2019, is facing his prime minister’s biggest crisis after a scandal and a litany of wrongdoing, and opponents say he is not fit to be prime minister.
Angela Rayner, the deputy leader of the opposition Labor Party, said Johnson was not in work because the Omicron variant was causing a rise in coronavirus infections.
“A government full of chaos when the country suffers for a few weeks,” Rayner wrote on social media. “We deserve better than this buffoon.”
Johnson has been widely criticized for laughing and joking about a Downing Street party during the 2020 Christmas blockade, when jokes were banned when such parties were banned.
Downing Street denied it was a party. The chief executive officer of the United Kingdom, Simon Cas, has resigned from leading the investigation into the alleged parties after announcing that an incident had taken place in his office.
The loss of a parliamentary seat in a Conservative stronghold in North Shropshire this week has led to a litany of scandals and increased pressure on Johnson.
Earlier, 99 Conservative lawmakers voted against the so-called vaccine passport in the House of Commons, the most significant two-and-a-half-year uprising by Johnson as prime minister.
Frost, a former diplomat whom Johnson has repeatedly called “the biggest ice cream since the Great Ice Age of 1709,” was committed to Brexit, negotiating Johnson’s revised EU divorce agreement and trade deal.
He voted to leave the UK in 2016 as part of a wider uprising against the bloc’s transnational collective government that sought to revive the nation-state.
Being a true “Brexit believer” in the midst of power in the UK gave reassurance to the Conservative Party’s Brexit supporters that Johnson would continue to work hard with the EU.
Until Frost resigned, he was leading an attempt in London to renegotiate parts of the divorce agreement for Northern Ireland.
Beyond Brexit, however, the 56-year-old Frost was unhappy.
In a speech last month, Frost expressed his clear disagreement with the direction of post-Brexit UK policy.
“We have not pushed the borders of the European Union back from the UK with Brexit, after all this time to import that European model,” Frost said in a speech at the Margaret Thatcher Trade Conference on 22 November.
He disagreed with “those who believe that we can treat the private sector as a convenient way to keep the public sector running.”
“It’s not just a source of tax,” Frost said. “We cannot continue as before, and if all we do after Brexit is to import the European social model, we will not succeed.”
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