David Frost and his 100 negotiators arrive in Brussels

A hundred good men and women arrived in Brussels yesterday. They carry with them the Prime Minister’s hope that he can persuade 27 other European governments to see things though British

Brexit eyes.

In the past, UK discussions and decisions with Europe have been bi-partisan affairs. When he took Britain into Europe, Ted Heath worked closely with pro-Europeans in the Labour and Liberal

parties to build a cross-party consensus. He allowed a free vote on signing the EEC Treaty, so with the threat of a whipped vote removed it was easier for Roy Jenkins and a young John Smith

to vote in line with their beliefs and resist the pressure from Tony Benn and the rising tide of 1970s Labour Europhobia.

Similarly, Tony Blair insisted that the UK delegation to the convention set up to draft the EU constitutional treaty should include Tory representatives. Iain Duncan Smith, then Tory leader,

despatched the arch Eurosceptic David Heathcoat-Amory to represent the Conservative’s interests.

It was this convention that removed the famous reference to “ever closer union” in the preamble to all EU Treaties since 1957. But when the French and Dutch rejected the text in a 2005

referendum, the famous words resurfaced in the hastily cobbled together cut and paste language of the Lisbon Treaty.

So who are these “glorious hundred” who carry the hopes of all those who want to see Brexit consummated? Their leader is David Frost, the mild-mannered FCO official who studied medieval

French at Cambridge and was one of the hardest working FCO officials on Europe when I was Europe Minister.

Frost always had concerns about the way Brussels operated. He was never a classic Ukip or Gove-Patel anti-European, but felt that the Brussels bureaucracy always did what was best for itself

and not what was best for Britain.

Now he leads a team to deliver what the Prime Minister wants. They will all be relative novices, as no living person has negotiated a trade deal for the UK. From Day One of the European

Community’s existence in 1957, trade has been overseen by EU officials in Brussels, not national governments.

Frost’s opposite number, Michel Barnier, was first elected to the French national assembly when he was just 27 — that was before Boris Johnson was at Eton or David Frost was at Nottingham

High School.

Barnier has invested the last 30 months in visiting EU27 capitals to meet heads of government and parliamentarians to explain his Brexit negotiating posture.

Frost is also a master of detail. His 100 cavaliers and roundheads will meet in a giant Brussels conference centre, as there is no room in any EU institution big enough to take them all.

They will break up into working groups on all the aspects of trade relations between the EU and Brexit Britain. The EU side is helpfully conducting the negotiations in English. The plan is

to try and agree the easy stuff first and put off the more contentious areas of disagreement for later.

But these contentious areas can prove very problematic indeed. The EU and the Swiss have been negotiating over 100 sectoral agreements since 1993. Even now, they are still in disagreement

over the exact role for the European Court of Justice.

In the end it will be the Prime Minister, not David Frost, who decides, just as on the EU side it will be President Macron — who is very close to Barnier — and Angela Merkel and other EU

elected heads of government who will hold sway.

The meetings in Brussels and then the return negotiations in London — assuming the coronavirus outbreak does not derail the whole timetable — will be important. But in the end it will be a

political question. Everyone agrees the UK has left the EU Treaty. But what future relationship is agreed is an open question.

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