Barwell, a quiet man now elevated (like Frost) to the House of Lords, tweeted angrily: “The absolute state of David Frost trashing the deal he negotiated + hailed as a triumph – despite many, yours truly included, warning it was a dud “and worse”, now using it to further undermine our relationship with some of our closest friends in an increasingly dangerous world.”
Barwell then posed the question on everyone’s lips given Frost’s original claim he had secured a great deal. Did he not understand what he had agreed? Or did he think that having a deal was the best way to win an election and he could try to get out of the bits he didn’t like after the election?
The world soon got the answer via Dominic Cummings, Johnson’s ex campaign strategist. He turned to Twitter to declare that, given the “worst constitutional crisis in a century” and a deep state opposed to a hard Brexit, “we wiggled through with best option we cd and intended to get (Johnson) to ditch bits we didn’t like after whacking Corbyn”.
No one of this resolves the Johnson government’s increasingly fraught negotiations with the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol; but it does offer an unvarnished version of recent Brexit history, one worthy of a scene out of the Sopranos.
We await Season two with trepidation.
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