Lord Frost who said Wales and Scotland not nations to be left out of Truss cabinet after insisting on top job

A peer who said that Wales and Scotland were not nations is set to be left out of Liz Truss’ cabinet after insisting on a higher profile role than she was willing to give him.

Lord Frost made headlines last month when he said that the UK should become a “unitary state” with devolution “evolved back”, and independence should be made “impossible”.

However, the former Brexit negotiator now seems to have negotiated his way out of contention for a cabinet post, after formerly being tipped to lead the Cabinet Office, which is responsible for political and constitutional reform.

Instead, he was offered the job of Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster formerly occupied by Michael Gove, which he rejected.

According to the Daily Telegraph, he was also offered the role of Leader of the House of Lords but declined it as he felt that he had not been a peer for long enough.

He resigned from Boris Johnson’s Cabinet in December last year after criticising the Prime Minister’s stance on the Northern Ireland Protocol, despite he himself having negotiated it.

He is quoted as saying that he had “no hard feelings” over having been left out of contention in Liz Truss’ cabinet.

‘Endangered’

Lord Frost had raised eyebrows earlier this month when, writing in the Telegraph, he said that the devolved governments were “subordinate” to Westminster and that the UK Government needed to change how it discussed them.

He that a referendum on independence should “simply be impossible”, with a bar of 75 per cent of seats in the devolved parliament being in favour of independence, over an entire decade.

He also said that letting part of the UK go would be a “massive national humiliation” and “morally wrong”.

Senior Scottish Tories had already expressed reservations that a powerful role in the cabinet for Lord Frost could undermine the Union, as the Cabinet Office is currently responsible for political and constitutional reform.

One leading Scottish Tory told the Times newspaper that Lord Frosts’ more “macho unionism” could “drive voters into the hands of the nationalists at a moment when they are becalmed”.

“The whole Union strategy — and it has boxed in the SNP — has been to stop the soft centre drifting towards independence. This sort of rhetoric endangers that,” they said.