Barely days after Boris Johnson faced a huge rebellion by 100 Tory MPs over new Covid restrictions, UK’s Brexit Minister Lord Frost has compounded the British Prime Minister’s woes by resigning from his post with ‘immediate effect.’
Lord Frost, who led the negotiations over the EU Withdrawal Agreement, reportedly submitted his resignation over a week ago since he wasn’t happy with new Covid restrictions announced by Johnson.
Lord Frost reportedly write in his resignation letter, “I hope we will move as fast as possible to where we need to get to: a lightly regulated, low-tax, entrepreneurial economy, at the cutting edge of modern science and economic change.”
Lord Frost said that new measures to reopen the economy in July this year ‘did not prove to be irreversible.’ He added, “I hope we can get back on track soon and not be tempted by the kind of coercive measures we have seen elsewhere.”
Johnson thanked Lord Frost for his contribution in his cabinet and wished him luck for the future. The British prime minister said that Lord Frost should be ‘immensely proud of your historic service to this government and this country.’
As many as 99 Conservative MPs had revolted against Boris Johnson last week when they voted against his Bills proposing more curbs in view of the discovery of the Omicron variant. The Opposition Labour had come to Johnson’s rescue by voting in favour of the government, failing which all three Bills would have been defeated in the parliament. This may have triggered Johnson’s downfall quicker than what his adversaries would have hoped for.
To make matter worse for Johnson, his party also suffered a by-election defeat in North Shropshire, where they enjoyed a comfortable majority of over 20,000 votes. Tories had held this seat for nearly 200 years but lost it to the Liberal Democrats last week. This signified the prevalent anger against Johnson amongst voters.
