It hardly feels like a serious discussion of the Conservative party’s future until Lord Frost has indicated where the leadership is going wrong. As Steerpike reported this weekend, the architect of the Brexit withdrawal agreement and former Scotch whisky salesman delivered a speech at the annual Margaret Thatcher Freedom Festival, and had some advice on the future relationship between the Conservatives and Reform UK.
It is perplexing to understand how Lord Frost has become some kind of sage of conservative thought
Frost argued that the door should be left open to some kind of electoral pact or agreement between the two parties closer to the next general election in 2028 or 2029. Whatever the formal framework, he said, the Conservatives and Reform UK would have to ‘work together at some point’:
If we get to within 12 months of another general election and we’re still divided 50/50 or thereabouts, then obviously pacts, arrangements will have to be on the agenda because we can’t go into an election divided again and losing.
To make this kind of cooperation possible, he explained, Conservatives should not be excessively hostile towards Nigel Farage and his insurgency. It was, he said, ‘important to try not to say things that are difficult to come back from’. There was consensus on many issues between the two, and they should attempt to build a ‘movement’ together.
Frost clearly has considerable regard for Farage. He has previously described him as ‘a natural part of the right movement in this country’, and in January talked about the potential need to ‘accommodate’ Reform UK gaining a decisive advantage. This is Frost the peacemaker, Frost the diplomat, Frost the negotiator.
I personally don’t think it’s right for Conservatives to rubbish Reform figures, or even more so, people who voted for Reform… we need to be building agreement and understanding between each other, not, you know, digging the trench even deeper.
It is not all smooth words and eirenic blandishments. After his speech, Frost was asked how Tory leader Kemi Badenoch could demonstrate that the Conservative party was genuinely conservative. He proposed essentially a doctrinal commitment, a Test Act for the modern centre-right.
I do think we almost need a kind of statement of what conservatism is that people have to sign up to. And if you can’t sign up to it, then you shouldn’t be in the Conservative party. And if we lose a few MPs on the left, then maybe that’s the price to pay for getting the party in the right place.
The underlying theme here is barely underlying at all: be nice to Nigel, and purge elected Members of Parliament whose political views you judge insufficiently in line with your own.
It is sometimes perplexing to understand how Lord Frost has come to be some kind of sage of conservative thought. For more than 25 years, he worked in the Foreign Office, the department mordantly described by Lady Thatcher as not just ‘wet’ but ‘drenched’, before moving to the private sector as CEO of the Scotch Whisky Association. This was before his apparent conversion to the benefits of leaving the European Union: before the 2016 referendum. Writing in what was stressed to be a personal capacity, he argued that ‘leaving would be fraught with economic risk’, and that ‘the case for change has to be overwhelming. It isn’t’.
It is also hard to overlook the fact that Frost has never endured the hard knocks of election. Boris Johnson sent him to the House of Lords after his service as chief Brexit negotiator, and he enjoyed a brief, nine-month ministerial career. In 2023, he applied successfully to be placed on the Conservative party’s candidate list, though was only prepared to give up his lifetime tenure in the House of Lords if a safe constituency were available. In June last year, he abandoned the idea.
Yet he now stakes out a position on the uncompromising right: uncompromising, that is, except with other people on the right. While Frost thinks it is unwise to ‘rubbish Reform figures’, Farage has shown no reciprocal restraint. Before the last election, he declared that ‘a Tory vote is a now wasted vote – we are now the real opposition’. Some of us do not see a potential ally.
As Clint Eastwood’s ‘Dirty’ Harry Callahan observed, opinions are like assholes, everybody has one. We are all entitled to them and to compete for a hearing. Equally, we must all defend the basis on which we offer them and demonstrate our locus standi. I speak for no one but myself and am extremely wary of doctrinal tests.
Seeking to hold the door open to a rival party that seeks the Tories’ destruction, while sizing up elected Conservative MPs for the next passing tumbril, is not the open and generous attitude it pretends to be. The Conservative party has to show angry and disaffected voters harnessed by Reform UK why Conservatism once again represents the instincts of the centre-right, of freedom, opportunity, fairness and prosperity. When Margaret Thatcher became leader of the party 50 years ago, she called it to a crusade, inviting ‘men and women of goodwill’ to join it and exclude no one. But she was absolutely clear: it was the Conservative party, not any rival, which was ‘the last bastion between Britain and disaster’.
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