Dominic Raab announced as new UK Foreign Secretary
Dominic Raab was the only contender in the race to lead the Conservative Party who outflanked the new prime minister’s pro-Brexit views.
Boris Johnson has now sought to keep him onside with promotion to foreign minister.
Although he has little Middle East experience, Mr. Raab spent six years as a government lawyer in the department at a time when the legal position on preparations for the Iraq war was the hottest issue in politics.
He has defended his role by saying he worked under Elizabeth Wilmshurst, a senior Foreign Office lawyer who resigned warning the war plan was illegal.
In the previous government of Theresa May, he spent four months as the minister in charge of Brexit. While there, he managed to muddle up the Red Sea, which runs from Egypt’s Suez down to Bab El Mandeb off Yemen, with the much closer to home Irish Sea when talking about trade barriers with Europe during a parliamentary session.
The staunch Eurosceptic, after he came last in the second round of the leadership race, stated his backing for Mr. Johnson. That support has led to him becoming the UK’s senior diplomat.
Jeremy Hunt, Mr. Johnson’s Conservative Party leadership rival, has now resigned as foreign secretary in the midst of a worsening standoff with Iran over captured tankers.
Mr. Hunt won around a third of votes cast in a ballot of Conservative Party members, but refused to become defence minister, a demotion from his post as foreign secretary.
Previously the Brexit Secretary, Mr. Raab comes with a background of dealing and negotiating with senior international figures. He quit the job last November over the withdrawal agreement with the EU because he said it would leave the UK too closely aligned to the European block.
In his resignation letter, he slammed the “indefinite” Northern Irish backstop, an insurance arrangement to stop a hard border on the island of Ireland that is hated by pro-Brexit figures.
During a televised debate in the early stages of the Conservative Party leadership race, Mr. Raab was keen to burnish his credentials as the man who could stand up to Brussels big names and renegotiate the withdrawal agreement.
“They said I pushed them too hard, they said I told them things that no one else had ever dared, well about time too. The truth is I just made clear we couldn’t accept that backstop and that our future relationship must be based on a best in class free trade agreement, not the cage of a customs union,” he said to cheers.
“I offered constructive solutions, I predicted the deal would be rejected if we didn’t secure them and ultimately, I resigned because I wasn’t in good conscious willing to walk a bad deal over the line,” he added.
He courted controversy as the first top-rank politician to argue suspending parliament could force a no-deal Brexit through even though a majority of MPs are strongly against a clean break from the EU.
Mr. Raab other prior foreign office experience is working as a lawyer and advisor to the Arab-Israeli conflict, EU law and Gibraltar.
He also previously worked at The Hague and focused on bringing in suspected war criminals, including Slobodan Milosevic, Radovan Karadzic and Charles Taylor.
But diplomats may be concerned about Mr. Raab criticising the now-former UK ambassador to the US, Sir Kim Darroch, after leaks showed he had described President Donald Trump’s administration “inept.” Mr. Raab said the comments were too personal.
Speaking on Tuesday, he said it was important to have a strong relationship with the US and Mr. Trump.
“I’m proud that we’ve got an American president, [who] when he last came here had a lot of warm things to say about this country,” he told Channel 4.
“He’s been a contentious figure but if you want strong relationships between the people of this country and the people of the United States of America, we want to get from the back of the queue to the front of the queue for a trade deal, I think it’s good to have warm relations.”
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