Brexit is healing democracy and has revived British politics, former minister Lord Frost has claimed.
The Tory peer and former chief Brexit negotiator said leaving the EU had given the UK the opportunity to “debate and change everything again in this country”.
But, in a swipe at Rishi Sunak’s Windsor Framework, Lord Frost said the benefits of Brexit did not apply to everyone. And he defended populist politics as “reflecting citizens actual views”.
Lord Frost’s comments came in a debate in the House of Lords during which the Green Party’s Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb compared the “corrupt, far-right government” with 1930s Germany and the rise of the Nazi party.
Speaking in the Lords, she said: “This is not a democracy. This is not a country we can be proud of any more.”
Lady Jones added: “Our traditions have been scrapped and this Government is responsible for that.
“I would argue that, at the moment, the strength of parliamentary democracy in the UK is absolutely zero.”
In response, Lord Frost thanked Lady Jones for securing the debate, but said he “did not recognise” her “bleak, rather fantastic and comic picture” of the UK.
He said: “When the nation state weakens, confidence in democracy weakens and that is just what we saw in this country over the last nearly 50 years during the time of our membership of the EU.
“Then we were in practice only a limited democracy. Fewer and fewer issues could be settled at national elections.
“Policies on trade, agriculture, fisheries, the environment, employment, social, migration, citizenship rights could only be changed by agreement in Brussels, whatever our national electorate said.
“It’s no wonder I think that people switched off and stopped believing voting could change everything.
“Luckily, we have now escaped that or at least 95 per cent of us have escaped that since the Windsor Framework unfortunately preserved some of these weaknesses. I hope not for too long.
“Overall, we have brought politics back home. We have revived political life, we can debate and change everything again in this country.
“Of course, it’s clear that many people are uncomfortable with that. They call it populism when a democracy reflects citizens’ actual views.
“But for me it is a strength. Our democracy is healing. Politics is coming back to life.”
