Lord Frost says Penny Mordaunt isn’t up to the job

In an excoriating interview on TalkTV just now, Lord Frost has said he has ‘grave reservations’ about Penny Mordaunt becoming the prime minister. The former Brexit negotiator, who quit Boris Johnson’s cabinet last year, told Julia Hartley-Brewer ‘To be honest, I’m quite surprised she is where she is in this race. She was my deputy – notionally more than really – in the Brexit talks last year’. He went on:

I’m sorry to say this, I felt she did not master the detail that was necessary in the negotiations last year, she wouldn’t always deliver tough messages to the European Union when that was necessary and I’m afraid she wasn’t fully accountable. She wasn’t always visible, sometimes I didn’t even know where she was. I’m this became such a problem that after six months I had to ask the PM to move her on.

Treasury minister Simon Clarke, a prominent Liz Truss supporter, has also now jumped in, declaring that ‘Lord Frost’s warning is a really serious one.