YOU shouldn’t need to be Foreign Secretary to spot the biggest humanitarian crisis in modern times as it exploded in Afghanistan on Friday. Nor did it require 20/20 vision to see the risks to security on the streets of Britain and Europe as the brutal Taliban stormed to victory in Kabul. Even basking in Crete […]
YOU shouldn’t need to be Foreign Secretary to spot the biggest humanitarian crisis in modern times as it exploded in Afghanistan on Friday.
Nor did it require 20/20 vision to see the risks to security on the streets of Britain and Europe as the brutal Taliban stormed to victory in Kabul.
Even basking in Crete at his “sparkling boutique resort for the privileged and perceptive” (their words, not mine), Dominic Raab could not have missed TV images of terrified Afghans fearing for their lives.
Indeed, as Foreign Secretary, he would have been the first after PM Boris Johnson to be warned by UK diplomats and intelligence on the ground about this fast-moving international tragedy.
He would have been alerted that Taliban leaders were carrying out house-to-house searches for females aged between 12 and 45 as “spoils of war” for their jubilant warriors.
He would have known tens of thousands of Afghan soldiers and interpreters loyal to Nato forces would be hunted and killed.
Vengeance at the point of a Kalashnikov was inevitable as a Taliban warlord recounted his eight years imprisoned in America’s Guantanamo Bay. There was no question of forgiving and forgetting.
Yet “perceptive” is not one of Mr Raab’s strong suits. His lame excuses for remaining on holiday in the Med until Sunday beggar belief.
This, after all, is supposed to be our deputy Prime Minister, a candidate for the top job until beaten by Boris in 2019.
He is among the most nakedly ambitious politicians in Westminster, a keen-eyed combatant whose martial arts include a karate black belt.
Importantly, he has access to the RAF Airbus Voyagers available to Royal VIPs and top-rank government ministers.
He should have packed his bags and boarded the first jet home on Friday.
Even humble political journalists sometimes have to cut holidays short, as I did after learning that Chancellor Nigel Lawson had quit, putting Margaret Thatcher’s premiership on the skids.
My three-week break ended up as a day trip to Australia.
As Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab’s responsibilities are, of course, infinitely greater — and the response more compelling.
So are his own career opportunities.
He still nurses dreams of one day being PM, a prospect badly dented this week.
Yes, Cabinet ministers deserve a decent holiday like the rest of us.
They work hard and the past 18 months have been particularly stressful.
But we have seen little of our Foreign Secretary during the Covid pandemic, even at times when events have spilled over on to the international stage.
In any case, this is the price of high political office.
This was one of those rare opportunities for Raab to take the stage on an issue of global importance.
He can take a holiday any time in splendid luxury once his political career is over and he is reaping the rich rewards on the boardroom jobs circuit.
Perhaps he was imitating American President “Sleepy Joe” Biden, who spent five days loitering at Camp David before deigning to address the world on the horrors sweeping Afghanistan.
If so, it was a poor example to follow. Biden’s presidency, barely eight months old, may have been terminally damaged by his slothful response to a crisis of his own making.
Whatever the arguments for and against the departure of American-led Nato forces, the timing and conduct of the mission have proved utterly disastrous.
“He is finished,” a former Tory Chancellor told me this week, “just as President Jimmy Carter was finished after the Iranian hostage crisis.”
Carter became a one-term President after a botched 1980 attempt to rescue 52 American diplomats from the US embassy in Tehran.
America’s Afghan meltdown is arguably an even bigger blot on its superpower image than either Tehran or its humiliating evacuation of Saigon five years earlier.
The tragedy for America, and those who rely on the world’s policeman for protection, is that Biden has more than three years still to serve.
His memory loss and physical stumbles were already putting a question mark over his White House future and there is nobody serious waiting in the wings to take over.
Vice-President Kamala Harris has disappointed her fans at home as a President-in-waiting.
Now feminists worldwide are dismayed by her silence over the fate of Afghan women and young girls apparently doomed by the Taliban’s harsh Sharia law.
Predictably, Labour MPs, led by erratic opportunist Lisa Nandy, are calling for Dominic Raab to be sacked.
Nandy pounced on claims the Foreign Secretary failed to intervene personally to help evacuate Afghan interpreters and left the task to a junior minister.
Asked in Downing Street if he would resign, Mr Raab replied: “No.”
He will not be sacked — at least not until the next reshuffle — by a Prime Minister who is notoriously reluctant to ditch Cabinet colleagues under fire.
But this was undoubtedly a bad week for Dominic Raab’s reputation as a safe pair of hands — and a missed opportunity to perform as a major political statesman on the world stage.
