On paper Dominic Raab MP has an impressive CV, however those distinguished academic achievements from Oxford University are not appreciated or indeed evident to the public since he became a politician and minister.
He gives the appearance of a man who, when he thinks, it seems to hurt.
In a mere ten years, Raab’s career has rocketed him into one of the great offices of state as foreign secretary.
Though amongst the ranks of the current Tory cabinet that is hardly a difficult achievement. It’s not hard to blossom as a flowering weed amongst a row of cabbages and turnips.
The paucity of talent, which once flourished within the Conservative party, has been flushed out by the Brexit debacle. But the Tory brain drain started with the Cameron administrations.
The era of big beast politicians is long gone.
Amongst the ranks of famous foreign secretaries such as Palmerston, Canning, Castlereagh, Bevin, Howe and Straw, now sits the name of Dominic Raab.
Politically speaking, we are in the age of the Orcs, albeit posh ones with plummy accents and the ability to know which knife and fork to use in the Ritz.
As the chair of the Remain campaign during the Brexit referendum I had the pleasure of testing the mental gymnastics of Mr Raab’s mind in media debates. It was an unenlightening experience. I sometimes felt a sponge would have a better capacity to retain the facts about the impending fallout of Brexit.
Rather incredulously, Raab once admitted to a loose grasp of geography when he said he didn’t realise how reliant Britain was on the port of Dover for trade. To add to his woes, he was properly filleted like a kipper at a House of Common’s select committee by the forensic questioning of former MP for North Down, Lady Sylvia Hermon, who fished out of him his ignorance of the Good Friday Agreement.
Now it appears that during the worst humanitarian crisis of recent years in Afghanistan, Mr Raab, the British Foreign Secretary put the ‘do not disturb’ sign up whilst on holiday.
This is not just dereliction of duty as claimed by Sir Keir Starmer, it demonstrates a complete lack of empathy and an absolute absence of emotional intelligence.
What is unfolding in Afghanistan is a calamity but it should have been easily predicted.
Starmer is right to accuse the government of complacency. Both the American and British administrations have been shoring up an incompetent, corrupt and decaying facade of democracy in Afghanistan.
Since 2001 successive Afghan administrations have failed to connect with or win the confidence of the diverse tribes within its borders. Politicians and politics failed Afghanistan.
Corruption is endemic in Afghanistan.
An anti corruption report in 2016 by Transparency International said “corruption is increasingly embedded in social practices, with patronage politics and bribery becoming an acceptable part of daily life”. One commentator said: “Afghanistan was hollowed out by corruption”.
The re-emergence of the Taliban and the obvious ease with which they took control of the country is disturbing. The Afghan army is allegedly 300,000 strong and equipped with the latest weaponry and technology. The Taliban are a rag-bag of ruffians, ill equipped and comparatively small in number. And yet, political and military resistance melted away like snow off a ditch. The repressive Islamic laws implemented by the Taliban are truly frightening for women, children and minorities within Afghanistan.
Those Afghans who worked with the American, British and allied forces are right to feel betrayed. They and their families deserve better. Certainly the consequences of an ill thought-out military exit from Afghanistan are evident from the chaos at Kabul airport.
The Afghan teenager and promising young soccer player Zaki Anwari fell from the under carriage of a C-17 US military plane as it took off. It’s sobering to witness the type of desperation which drove Zaki to his death.
Dominic Raab should resign but he won’t.
