Brexit negotiator David Frost may not be scared to walk away without a deal, but we are

Editorial: There are few spectacles more pathetic than talking tough when the stakes with which you gamble are other people’s life chances instead of your own

(Brian Adcock/The Independent)

David Frost, now Lord Frost, the government’s chief Brexit negotiator and new national security adviser does not give many interviews. That he has chosen to speak to The Mail on Sunday, as he did last week, intimates that both he and the prime minister he serves wish to make their position absolutely clear to the British people.

Lord Frost reiterates that he is “not scared” to walk away with no deal. Theresa May spent several years saying the same, but turned out not to mean it. This government, on the other hand, really does mean it. Or so they say.

We are well used to the macho posturing of this government, and naturally there are few spectacles more pathetic than talking tough when the stakes with which you gamble are other people’s life chances instead of your own, but they do appear to mean it.

Lord Frost says Theresa May “blinked and had [her] bluff called at critical moments” and that this time it will be the EU’s turn to blink first. Whether or not they do is another question. Frost, Cummings, Gove and Johnson have in recent months liked nothing more than to talk tough about the immovability of the end of year deadline. There will be no extension to the transition period. That will be that, in Frost’s words, “come what may”.  

But blinking contests don’t work in this way. Someone always loses because someone always blinks. If you’re also playing against a clock, an agonising draw which leads to the hospitalisation of both parties is a fairly likely outcome.

Lord Frost says that Michel Barnier, and the rest of the EU, are only now coming to understand that they are dealing with a negotiating partner unlike any they have dealt with before. There will not be permanent delay, before the weaker party, in this case us, concedes.  

This is partly correct. For four years, the UK’s negotiating position has been correctly caricatured as that of the sheriff from Blazing Saddles, who holds his own gun to his head and tells his adversaries to stop or I’ll shoot.

Understandably, this has been met with bemusement on the EU side. And now we are at the stage of the process where a very publicity shy career diplomat has to give public interviews to make clear that this really is the position. We won’t blink. We will shoot. It’s not a comedy. Not for us, anyway.

Of course, the analogy is imperfect. Frosty the Sheriff stands ready not to shoot himself but other people. He also makes clear the aspect of Brexit that has been strangely downplayed in four years of almost omniscient Brexit talk: that the people who delivered it, Dominic Cummings, mainly, don’t care very much about it. It is merely the first comparatively small hurdle that must be vaulted before the real job can begin – of rebuilding the way the government does things. That it can plough large amounts of money into curious tech start-ups, and just do things very differently to how they have been done before.

They really are ready to slam their foot on the accelerator, because they and only they can see the promised land, over there beyond the far cliff edge. For those of us in the back of the car, who have witnessed this government make an execrable mess of absolutely everything it has touched, the time to voice our doubts has long since passed.

We will just have to wait and see where we land.