Frost’s return foiled as party seeks ‘local’ MP
Former Brexit minister’s prospects of filling seat vacated after porn row fade after ‘parachute’ fears
‘He is a serious figure who thinks carefully and communicates well. We need him in Commons’
LORD FROST’S path to a speedy return to Westminster politics appears to have been blocked as Conservatives picking a candidate for a coming by-election seek someone from the area. The former Brexit minister, who left Boris Johnson’s Cabinet in December, is understood to be open to running as a Tory MP after a career as a government official.
But any hope of standing in Tiverton and Honiton, the seat newly vacant after Neil Parish resigned after admitting watching pornography in the Commons, appears likely to be dashed.
The local Conservative association is said to want a local candidate, given the Liberal Democrats – the biggest threat to victory there – are sure to criticise anyone that is “parachuted” into the seat. Lord Frost lives in London and his family roots are in the Derby area, both around 200 miles away from the Devon constituency.
Since leaving the office he has called on Mr Johnson to follow traditional Tory policies, not least demanding the tax burden be lowered.
Earlier this year he ruled out running for the Tory leadership if it became free, saying that the country would not want someone in the House of Lords as prime minister. Tiverton is a traditionally safe Conservative seat with a current majority of 24,239, making it an attractive way into Parliament for Tory hopefuls.
Mr Parish only formalised his resignation yesterday, with discussions in Tory circles about finding a replacement still only just beginning.
There will be no all-women shortlist for the seat, despite some Tory calls for the move, given Oliver Dowden, the Tory Party chairman, sees the measures as a blunt instrument.
Yet it is considered likely that the local party will select a female candidate with the claims of misogyny and sexism thrown at the Tories after the pornography revelations last week.
Lord Frost, now a Telegraph columnist, was one of Mr Johnson’s most loyal supporters in government as they worked together on Brexit negotiations.
The peer was an adviser when Mr Johnson was foreign secretary and was later put in charge of Brexit talks with Brussels in late 2019.
But Lord Frost walked out of the Cabinet before Christmas because he opposed tougher Covid lockdown measures as cases of the omicron variant surged.
There were calls for him to stand in Tiverton at the weekend.
One former minister said: “Frost is a serious figure who thinks carefully and communicates well. We need him in the Commons.”
Lord Frost used an interview with The Telegraph in January to criticise how quickly restrictions had been adopted in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
He said then: “The teams managing Covid, in No10 and elsewhere, were coming into the office and seeing people throughout – they tended to forget what life was like for everybody else.
“I do think that meant we were more ready to reach for lockdown and coercive measures than we might have been in other circumstances.”
He has also called for taxes to be lowered and for the Johnson government to slow the pursuit of green reforms to protect the economy.