Boris Johnson must clear out the “woke crowd’ and “neo-socialists” at Downing Street if he wants to hold on to power, ex-Brexit minister Lord Frost has said.
Launching a broadside agains the prime minister, the Tory peer said “significant” changes were needed to the policies and personnel at No 10.
“Whatever conclusions about the leadership Tory MPs may draw from the Gray report and whatever follows, the crucial thing is significant change in policies and in systems and people around the PM,” he tweeted on Thursday.
Sharing a column in The Telegraph, Frost said he agreed “the neo-socialists, green fanatics and pro-woke crowd” should be “exiting immediately”.
Touch of Frost
In response, Johnson’s official spokesperson said: “It’s everybody’s focus in No 10 to deliver on the prime minister’s priorities, which he’s set out publicly before, in terms of building back from the pandemic and levelling up for Britain.”
It comes after Lord Frost joined the growing number of senior Conservatives to call for the planned national insurance hike to be scrapped.
He urged Johnson not to raise the tax in April as cost-of-living is set to increase.
The former Brexit Minister – who resigned last month, ostensibly in protest at government tax increases – told the Daily Mail that the £12 billion tax hike was “never necessary or justified”.
“Given the new pressures on energy prices and inflation, it’s even more important now to scrap these tax increases and focus on getting the economy growing again,” he said.
“Allowing people to keep more of their own money is always the best way.”
He added: “The tax rises this April were never necessary or justified”.
‘A lot of wrong data’
Lord Frost’s remarks come after former Brexit secretary David Davis also called for the proposed increase of 1.25 percentage points to be scrapped in the face of cost of living pressures.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme the national insurance rise would remove about ten per cent of the disposable income of “ordinary families” and was based on the “wrong data”.
Davis said: “It was a judgment made on, frankly, quite a lot of wrong data.
“They didn’t know at the time that by April we would have the highest inflation rate in 30 years, they didn’t know that interest rates would be going up, council tax would be going up, the fuel price is about to jump by £700 a year for the average family.
“Therefore, they didn’t know quite what pressure there would be on ordinary people.”
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