FORMER Brexit negotiator David Frost bungled a magazine interview with a vague threat to the EU to invoke Article 16.
Frost made a bizarre claim that the UK Government signed the EU withdrawal bill under "parliamentary duress" during the House of Commons’ Brexit deadlock in 2019, and that the pressure was on to get the deal signed by the deadline.
What he has neglected to mention, is that at the time Frost was the Prime Minister’s Europe Advisor and was the person in charge of the negotiations over the bill. Is he trying to suggest that he caused the duress to other MPs?
And, in another piece of the strange interview, published in the Spectator, Frost let slip that under his predecessor Oliver Robbins, the EU “learned we said things and didn’t necessarily stick by them”.
This, Frost claims, is why his negotiating tactics may be seen as “aggressive or being difficult” as he tried to get the EU to take his word seriously. Has he considered that he might just be aggressive and difficult to work with?
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And, when it comes to the Northern Ireland issue, poor Frost moaned that the issue dominates all his time as the protocol he created that replaced the Irish backstop is creating difficulties for him. Never mind that the legislation has caused friction in Northern Ireland, a border down the Irish sea or that it led to Arlene Foster being forced out of her job as DUP leader because of Unionist unease.
He even took a pop at the EU for threatening to invoke Article 16 in January during a row over vaccine supplies before they quickly u-turned. But then, immediately afterwards Frost threatens that the UK Government are contemplating using it themselves due to issues with "trade diversion" and a row over food rules.
It is a strange way this UK Government operates, criticising the EU for considering triggering the article before pulling it out as a threat on its own, as always with Westminster you can expect them to be childish.
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