Lord Frost ‘won’t be in first Liz Truss Cabinet after rejecting two roles’


Lord Frost – Tayfun Salci/Shutterstock

Lord Frost, the former Brexit negotiator, will not be in Liz Truss’s first Cabinet after turning down two roles that were offered to him, The Telegraph understands.

The ex-diplomat was sounded out about the role of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, once occupied by Michael Gove, but rejected it because Ms Truss wants the job to be far more narrowly focused than in Mr Gove’s time.

Ms Truss’s team also raised the possibility of making Lord Frost the Leader of the House of Lords, but he told them he would be the wrong person for the job because it should go to someone who has been a peer for much longer than his two years .

Although he indicated that he would be happy to serve in a Truss Cabinet if offered a job to which he felt he was suited, there has been no contact between the two sides in the past week.

On Monday afternoon, Priti Patel resigned as Home Secretary. Nigel Adams, the Cabinet Office minister, also quit. Both had been told there was unlikely to be a place for them in the Cabinet.

Nadine Dorries also followed suit on Monday evening as sources close to the Culture Secretary said she has decided to stand down and return to the backbenches.

Jake Berry, chairman of the Northern Research Group of Tory MPs, is to be appointed chairman of the Conservative Party. He will take over from Andrew Stephenson, who has only been in the role for two months, and his co-chairman Ben Elliot.

Mr Elliot, a businessman appointed by Mr Johnson in 2019, resigned from the job on Monday. He oversaw a huge increase in donations to the party from wealthy individuals, but has also faced questions about his business interests and fundraising methods.

Alister Jack, the Scottish Secretary, is set to remain in postwhile Alok Sharma expects to stay on in the Cabinet as President for COP26, as he will be in that role until November.

The news that Lord Forst, a former Cabinet Office minister, will be out of government will disappoint Conservative Party members, with whom he is hugely popular after playing a key role in securing an agreement with the EU over Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal.

Hey resigned from Mr Johnson’s Cabinet in December last year after criticizing his stance on the Northern Ireland Protocol and what he saw as his failures to seize the opportunities of Brexit.

Despite negotiating skills that might have made him a candidate for the job of Northern Ireland Secretary, he was not offered that role and currently plays no part in the attempts to resolve the disagreement with Brussels over the Northern Ireland Protocol.

Lord Frost told friends he had “no hard feelings” about his failure to land a Cabinet job and would continue to support Ms Truss in any way he could.

Having won the Tory leadership race on Monday, Ms Truss will announce her Cabinet on Tuesday after she has been formally appointed by the Queen at Balmoral.



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