Lord Frost has just appeared at the annual Anglo-German Königswinter Conference, where he delivered a stark warning to Boris: that he must not fall “into the trap of statism”, nor the “intellectual fallacy that a big state, high levels of public spending… can build sustainable economic growth over time”. A rare statement for a Conservative minister these days…

The pandemic, he went on to argue, must not become a trigger for continued state intervention, or a new economic consensus:

“I personally don’t want to accept that the levels of state involvement in our lives and in the economy we have seen in the last year are in any way normal. I want to get back to the old normal as soon as we can.

As we emerge from the pandemic, we must not lose our conviction that individual not collective rights are paramount, that living with risk is inevitable, or our belief that free debate and free expression of opinion are the right ways forward for a free society.”

This would all be red meat to the Tory grassroots. Shame it was delivered without an audience to a room full of Anglo-German technocrats, wonks, business leaders and diplomats in London by one of the quietest Cabinet attendees…