Lord Frost’s free-market foray

Away from the shenanigans of Downing Street’s Christmas parties, another festive bash was being held last night just down the road in Westminster. Mr S was among those at One Birdcage Walk enjoying the hospitality of the Adam Smith Institute’s annual shindig, where Lord Frost enlivened the evening with a stalwart defence of free-market principles against the tide of interventionism. Britain’s Brexit supremo raised some eyebrows in No. 10 last week with his comments at the Thatcher Conference on the need to diverge quicker from the ‘European social model’ adding ‘I agree with the Chancellor – our goal must be to lower taxes.’

And it was that same message Frost returned to in his speech, as he told the assembled neoliberals that ‘the spirit of divergence, the spirit of doing things differently, still needs to be spread in Whitehall and the country and we’re just beginning that process.’ Frost’s role, as he sees it, is to ‘drive forward those opportunities’ presented by Britain leaving the European Union and keep ‘the government focused on its strategic goal on what we’re really about on Brexit and not sort of lost in the weeds of the day to day problems.’