David Frost has infuriated Brussels over the Northern Ireland protocol – Boris Johnson must now get Joe Biden onside

It’s time for Johnson to become personally involved to prevent a drama over the protocol becoming a full-scale crisis

Do we have to talk about Brexit? We’ve sucked that lemon dry,” Boris Johnson told The Atlantic magazine. Yes prime minister, we do have to talk about Brexit. More importantly, you need to, and it’s your own fault.

Johnson’s weariness is understandable. It’s Groundhog Day in London today. David Frost, the Brexit minister, is reprising his confrontational approach during last year’s endless trade deal negotiations, as he hosts talks with his EU counterpart Maros Sefcovic on the Northern Ireland protocol.

Again, the EU accuses the ardent Brexiteer Frost of taking an “ideological” stance. Again, Frost accuses the EU of being unreasonable, inflexible and dogmatic. On this occasion, he suggests Brussels prioritises its single market over the Irish peace process, an incendiary charge.

True, the EU has been unnecessarily bureaucratic in the way it is implementing checks on products moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland, which remains under single market rules. But the fundamental cause of the current dispute is Johnson’s decision to sign up to this trade border in the Irish Sea in the 2019 withdrawal agreement.

Frost has argued that the government did not realise the protocol’s full implications. But that claim was demolished today by Gavin Barwell, who was Theresa May’s chief of staff. He told BBC Radio 4 that it was “inconceivable” Johnson could have signed up to the protocol without knowing the consequences. The arguments were well aired in the cabinet when Johnson was May’s foreign secretary, and civil servants would have spelt out the implications to him as prime minister, Barwell rightly pointed out.

The EU knows this and so can hardly be blamed for concluding Johnson is now trying to sabotage an agreement to which he put his name. Brussels officials are convinced the UK is trying to prove the protocol is unworkable so it can be rewritten, rather than trying to make it work – a crucial difference. But to reach a compromise on such a sensitive issue, mutual trust is needed. That this is in very short supply is Johnson’s fault; he has in effect walked away from his own agreement.

In Brussels, Frost is seen as the cause of the impasse. He is Billy No Mates on the continent, having largely eschewed the traditional late-night dinners with his EU counterparts his predecessors saw as a productive part of the job. Frost’s reticence was partly because of Covid restrictions, but also because he doesn’t do clubbable with the other side.

One EU source told me: “Frost can only play one game – hardball. It doesn’t come naturally to him to plot the route to a landing zone for a deal. It’s all about his own ideology.” To get around what they see as the “Frost roadblock”, the leaders of France, Germany, Italy, as well as European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, will lobby Johnson personally in the margins of the G7 summit in Cornwall.

In London, officials dismiss the idea that Frost is pursuing his own agenda, describing him as “his master’s voice”. This rings true. When Frost felt powerless as a backroom adviser and was thinking of walking out in February, Johnson made him a cabinet-level minister and he supplanted the more emollient Michael Gove as Brexit minister.

Johnson needs Biden onside for his wider G7 agenda – global vaccines, climate change, ensuring democratic nations stand up to China as well as his support for a UK-US trade deal

EU leaders might get less change out of Johnson in Cornwall than they hope. When they arrive, they will hardly be overjoyed to see Frost at the prime minister’s side. Their trump card in the game of poker over Northern Ireland is unlikely to be Johnson. But they might have one in another member of the G7 club – Joe Biden, who is fiercely proud of his Irish ancestry and takes a very close interest in the peace process.

That is why it’s time for Johnson to become personally involved to prevent a drama over the protocol becoming a full-scale crisis. That could easily happen: the UK might unilaterally declare more grace periods for checks, provoking EU retaliatory sanctions including eventual tariffs. With goodwill on both sides, there is scope for a compromise similar to the one in the trade deal – the UK accepts EU agri-food rules but retains the freedom to diverge in future if this hampers its ability to strike other trade deals.

Biden might privately urge Johnson to give ground, without lecturing him in public, while also urging the EU to show more flexibility in implementing the protocol. Johnson would be wise not to ignore the US president. He needs Biden onside for his wider G7 agenda – global vaccines, climate change, ensuring democratic nations stand up to China as well as his support for a UK-US trade deal.

The UK’s untimely £4bn cut in overseas aid spending has already called into question Johnson’s ability to use the showpiece summit to illustrate that Global Britain still deserves its seat at the world’s top table. The cut undermines his pitch for the UK to be a “problem solver” and “burden sharer”. To achieve that, Johnson cannot afford to alienate Biden on Ireland, an issue so close to his heart.