Tories split on Lord Frost’s exit

Gosh. It seems like it was only yesterday Mr S was in the Manchester conference hall hearing Lord Frost telling attendees how he planned to make Brexit a success. Just ten days ago he enraptured the Adam Smith Institute with his small-state calls for a ‘bit less social distancing and a bit more socialist distancing.’ Now he’s gone, the first major Cabinet resignation since Boris Johnson cleared out Theresa May’s team in July 2019. How has the bombshell – revealed earlier by the Mail on Sunday – gone down in a Tory party still seething from Thursday’s North Shropshire by-election defeat?

Early indications are of shock and dismay from across the party. The right of the party, which has always regarded Johnson’s Brexit credentials with some wariness, hoped that Frost could keep the Prime Minister on the straight and narrow in the battle to renegotiate the Northern Ireland Protocol and cast off the shackles of the European Court of Justice.