In the short distance, Dominic Raab (Buckinghamshire, 49 years old) has wardrobe charms, and far exceeds the size of the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak.
The fact that he was one of the most loyal members of the government to Sunak, whom he supported from the beginning in his aspirations to lead the Conservative Party, must have made the final sting of a forced resignation very painful.
“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee,” reads the poster of his beloved Muhammad Ali (born Cassius Clay), the legendary American boxer, with the motto that defined his deadly agility in the ring.
The legend has accompanied Raab in his office at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and in that of Justice, in a political career as brief as it was intense.
The son of an immigrant Jew who fled from the former Czechoslovakia to the United Kingdom, he was orphaned at the age of 10, and advanced in his academic journey —grammar
school
, or public baccalaureate of excellence, and later Law at Oxford and Cambridge— with ambition, effort and fists.
He competed in both boxing and karate.
What he has in excess of ambition lacks subtlety, and it has been his outbursts more than his remarkable personal career that have forged his public image.
Her 2011 definition of the BBC's UK women's feminists as "one of the most repulsive fanatical groups" garnered her an avalanche of criticism not only among opposition Labor but her own fellow Conservatives. .
And when she defended, in the 2017 electoral campaign, that the citizens who had to go to the food banks did not suffer from poverty, but "lack of liquidity", she garnered loud boos from the public present at the event.
His father became a food manager for the well-known Marks & Spencer chain.
Dominic specialized in International Law, and his early professional years brought him to the forefront of relevant events.
He advised the World Bank on its reconstruction projects in the West Bank, and was part of the legal team of one of the Palestinian negotiators of the PLO (Palestine Liberation Organization).
in the Oslo Accords of 1993. He was in the British team that tracked down from The Hague war criminals fleeing from the now extinct Yugoslavia, and came to defend former Prime Minister Tony Blair as a lawyer in the lawsuit filed against him by the then president of that country, Slobodan Milosevic.
Dominic Raab and Rishi Sunak applaud healthcare workers during the pandemic, outside the Foreign Office entrance in London on April 16, 2020.
ANDREW PARSONS/10 DOWNING ST (Reuters)
His rivals, who are counted in handfuls, blame him for a complete lack of empathy and emotional intelligence.
While Boris Johnson chaired the prestigious Oxford Union university debate club, Raab took over as head of the institution's boxing club.
And he has never stopped bragging about his third degree black belt in karate.
His boss, David Davis, a former Brexit minister under Theresa May, assured that he was much more impressed by that fact than by the young lawyer's political skills.
In a time of furious Euroscepticism, Raab was able to thrive on the political scene.
He participated in the Vote Leave
campaign
, in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and immediately became one of the most protected politicians by the ultra-conservative Jacob Rees-Mogg's European Research Group (ERG). .
The then Prime Minister May put him in charge of the negotiations with Brussels for the departure of the United Kingdom from the EU.
It didn't even last six months.
In a preventive maneuver camouflaged as a matter of principle, he resigned resoundingly after six months in protest at the drift that the content of the Withdrawal Agreement was adopting.
Acting Prime Minister during the pandemic
He reserved his tricks for the upcoming competition.
He was one of the first to announce his aspiration to replace May as leader of the Conservative Party when the primary process opened.
It didn't last long.
It was immediately possible to verify that his support, beyond the hard wing of the parliamentary group, was scarce.
Johnson decided, however, to count on him when he formed his new government.
He appointed him Foreign Minister and granted him the rank of
First Secretary of State
(Prime Minister of State), thus endowed with a prevalence and formal authority over the rest of the Cabinet, which was due more to the weight of his department than to your
auctoritas
staff.
Under these circumstances, Raab ended up acting as interim prime minister during the covid-19 pandemic, the most serious crisis of his generation, and with Johnson admitted to an intensive care unit.
During the hasty evacuation of the British who remained in Afghanistan, in August 2021, Raab was foreign minister, and it took him a few days to leave his vacation in Crete and take command of the operation.
Criticism led Johnson to remove his minister, but he put him in charge of Justice and kept him as Prime Minister of State.
After Liz Truss's brief and checkered tenure, in which Raab returned to being a deputy on the ground, Sunak rewarded his support by restoring him to his two previous positions, despite the fact that warnings about the politician's bad temper with his subordinates had already reached, albeit informally, the new prime minister.
In his cool and methodical manner, Sunak decided to order an independent investigation when accusations from officials against Raab for alleged workplace harassment began to pile up.
And with the conclusions in hand, he has dropped the eurosceptic politician who was thought untouchable.
With the manners of a butterfly, and the irreversible sting of a bee.
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