Raab should not resign

[redsturgeon]

...he should be sacked.

The Afghanistan situation develops at pace while Raab is holidaying in Crete, he has a choice to make. Should he live up to the responsibilities of his role and concentrate the full weight of his experience and abilities on trying to save lives and ease suffering or should he spend another couple of days on the beach relaxing?

He made his choice and that says everything that we need to know about his suitability for the role.

John

[servodude]

Should he live up to the responsibilities of his role and concentrate the full weight of his experience and abilities on trying to save lives and ease suffering

Let's consider recent precedents.....

...probably not I'd guess

Doesn't make it right though.

-sd

[redsturgeon]

Should he live up to the responsibilities of his role and concentrate the full weight of his experience and abilities on trying to save lives and ease suffering

Let's consider recent precedents.....

...probably not I'd guess

Doesn't make it right though.

-sd

Ha ha...yes I did wonder what Boris would have done in the same situation...for a nanosecond!

My daughter merely manages a restaurant and shows more sense of duty and responsibility in her little finger.

John

[bungeejumper]

What makes it so particularly awful, for me, is that Raab's own father Peter was a Czech Jew who fled the oncoming holocaust on the Kindertransport, as the Germans invaded in 1938. The minister's great-grandparents were duly murdered by the Nazis. You'd have thought that little Dominic would have picked up the phone to do his best for other desperate people in a directly parallel situation. But sigh, it seems that the beach was just too comfortable on the day.

BJ

[AsleepInYorkshire]

...he should be sacked.
Should he live up to the responsibilities of his role and concentrate the full weight of his experience and abilities on trying to save lives and ease suffering or should he spend another couple of days on the beach relaxing?
John

May I suggest the clue's in the question and it may be better if he stays on the beach.

AiY

[Sorcery]

Isn't the real problem not whether Raab could make a useful telephone call in the context of a collapsing Afghanistan, but Biden himself. While Trump may have negotiated withdrawal, afaik Trump had a plan to withdraw troops after non-combatants were removed. Biden took the troops out first and then sent some back. Whose stupid idea was it to use Kabul airport (adjacent to 4.5 million people rather than Bagram?
Biden and his administration are incompetent.

Moderator Message:
Derogatory remarks removed

God help us all.

[BobbyD]

...he should be sacked.

The Afghanistan situation develops at pace while Raab is holidaying in Crete, he has a choice to make. Should he live up to the responsibilities of his role and concentrate the full weight of his experience and abilities on trying to save lives and ease suffering or should he spend another couple of days on the beach relaxing?

He made his choice and that says everything that we need to know about his suitability for the role.

John

This is completely unfair.

It isn't Raab's fault. We all know he is completely incompetent. It took him 6 months as Brexit Sec to realise the importance of the Calais/Dover link to Britain, and the first thing he did after having this epiphany was to stand at the dispatch box in front of a live video feed and admit it.

Firing an incompetent for incompetence is obvious victim blaming. The person who should be sacked is the dolt who appointed him to a position of State.

[Dod101]

Boris’s cabinet is unravelling at pace. Everyone, starting with Boris should be looking at their position. I would personally give Boris a chance to recast his cabinet (not reshuffle because there is hardly a competent minister amongst them (Ben Wallace may be the exception)) Boris is a useful front man but seems out of his depth. All others except possibly Ben Wallace at least ditto if not totally useless like the aforesaid Dominic Raab.

Brexit is done and Boris now needs competent ministers not loyalists to that cause.

Dod

[UncleEbenezer]

Boris’s cabinet is unravelling at pace. Everyone, starting with Boris should be looking at their position. I would personally give Boris a chance to recast his cabinet (not reshuffle because there is hardly a competent minister amongst them (Ben Wallace may be the exception)) Boris is a useful front man but seems out of his depth. All others except possibly Ben Wallace at least ditto if not totally useless like the aforesaid Dominic Raab.

Brexit is done and Boris now needs competent ministers not loyalists to that cause.

Dod

But he's purged his party of non-ideologues (just as Stalin purged his own generals), and even meddled with the Civil Service. Do you suppose he'd recognise competence if handed it on a plate?

Perhaps this dysfunctional cabinet is doing us a favour? It's an example to point to when the prophets of "diversity" tell us how much better things will be if only we'd appoint some token "diverse" people without reference to competence!

[ursaminortaur]

Boris’s cabinet is unravelling at pace. Everyone, starting with Boris should be looking at their position. I would personally give Boris a chance to recast his cabinet (not reshuffle because there is hardly a competent minister amongst them (Ben Wallace may be the exception)) Boris is a useful front man but seems out of his depth. All others except possibly Ben Wallace at least ditto if not totally useless like the aforesaid Dominic Raab.

Brexit is done and Boris now needs competent ministers not loyalists to that cause.

Dod

But he's purged his party of non-ideologues (just as Stalin purged his own generals), and even meddled with the Civil Service. Do you suppose he'd recognise competence if handed it on a plate?

Perhaps this dysfunctional cabinet is doing us a favour? It's an example to point to when the prophets of "diversity" tell us how much better things will be if only we'd appoint some token "diverse" people without reference to competence!

At least a diverse group of people would be expected to have diverse points of view and the discussions between them and fusions of ideas might lead to better decisions being taken. Unfortunately with the current cabinet their selection for loyalty (to both Boris and the idea of brexit) seems instead to have led to groupthink and little questioning of the way forward.

[Lootman]

I agree. Why should he resign? There is nothing the UK could have done absent a US presence. Any UK forces would have been overrun.

[zico]

Boris’s cabinet is unravelling at pace. Everyone, starting with Boris should be looking at their position. I would personally give Boris a chance to recast his cabinet (not reshuffle because there is hardly a competent minister amongst them (Ben Wallace may be the exception)) Boris is a useful front man but seems out of his depth. All others except possibly Ben Wallace at least ditto if not totally useless like the aforesaid Dominic Raab.
Dod

There's never been anything stopping Boris Johnson recasting his cabinet if he wants to. Listening to Ben Wallace, I thought he had some moral fibre, but turns out he welcomed Trump's deal.

When the agreement was finalised, Mr Wallace praised it as a "small but important step towards the chance for Afghans to live in peace, free from terrorism". Emily Thornberry, then shadow foreign secretary, tweeted: "After 18 long years lets hope this deal promises a genuinely brighter future for Afghanistan, and is not the latest example of the Taliban playing the long game and waiting for the US to leave."

Brexit is done and Boris now needs competent ministers not loyalists to that cause.
Dod

No, it's the UK that needs competent ministers not loyalists.
Boris Johnson needs loyalists, now competent ministers.

Dominic Raab should be pretty safe because if he has to go because he was on holiday during a big crisis, people may say that Boris Johnson should also go for the same reason. (TV and media seem very reluctant to remind us that Boris Johnson started his holiday the day before Kabul fell).

You have to admire Raab's defence, which boils down to saying it makes no difference whether he's doing his job or away on holiday, because it's all down to the US anyway, and the UK has no influence. The subsidary defence was that nobody could expect him to have a clue about what might happen.

Shame about the pesky French wrecking his clever defence of by having been withdrawing their national and Afghan helpers since early May. (At the time, the French were criticised for being "pessimistic" about the future of Afghanistan)

[Lootman]

Dominic Raab should be pretty safe because if he has to go because he was on holiday during a big crisis, people may say that Boris Johnson should also go for the same reason. (TV and media seem very reluctant to remind us that Boris Johnson started his holiday the day before Kabul fell).

You may not be old enough to recall this but in the middle of a major UK financial crisis in the 1970s (and there were many of them back then pre-Thatcher) the then PM Jim Callaghan was asked at the airport on his way to his Caribbean holiday about the crisis, and his reply was: "What crisis?".

If he got to stay then, then BJ and Raab get to stay now.

[tjh290633]

Since none of us, nor the media, have seen Raab's phone log, we may be being unjust. This thread more ressembles a lynch mob than anything else.

TJH

[zico]

Dominic Raab should be pretty safe because if he has to go because he was on holiday during a big crisis, people may say that Boris Johnson should also go for the same reason. (TV and media seem very reluctant to remind us that Boris Johnson started his holiday the day before Kabul fell).

You may not be old enough to recall this but in the middle of a major UK financial crisis in the 1970s (and there were many of them back then pre-Thatcher) the then PM Jim Callaghan was asked at the airport on his way to his Caribbean holiday about the crisis, and his reply was: "What crisis?".

If he got to stay then, then BJ and Raab get to stay now.

I actually mentioned this over on the Afghanistan thread, as a good illustration of the vast difference in media coverage between Labour and Conservative. You clearly think Callaghan was completely in the wrong for his actions back in 1979, so why don't you think Boris Johnson and Dominic Raab are clearly in the wrong now? (Other than "Labour bad, Conservative good" of course!) Also, Callaghan was PM at the time, so he couldn't sack himself, anymore than Boris Johnson could sack himself. But Johnson can sack Raab, though he clearly has no intention of doing so.

Do you support Raab being sacked? Or do you honestly think that because a Labour Prime Minister didn't sack himself 42 years ago, that makes it OK for Raab to get away with being on the beach the day that Kabul fell?

It's emerged today in the Sunday Times that "No 10" (apparently Cummings's successor) told Raab to return from holiday on the Friday before Kabul fell, but Raab phoned Johnson and is quoted as having "nobbled" Johnson to agree Raab could stay on his holidays. So Raab wouldn't pick up the phone to save lives of people in Afghanistan, but he would make a phone call to plead to stay on his holidays. And Boris Johnson thought it was more important to take Raab's holiday call than it was to do something about the Afghanistan shambles!


Below is what I put on the Afghanistan thread a few days ago.

Interesting to see different perceptions of reporting. One undeniable and (to my mind) indefensible aspect of the crisis (and it is a crisis) is that the Foreign Secretary was on holiday in Cyprus in the week that the Taliban overran Afghanistan, and our Prime Minister started his holiday the day before the fall of Kabul. Everyone has to take holidays sometimes, but being on holiday at such a time of crisis? Remember the headlines "Crisis, what crisis?" when Jim Callaghan returned from holiday to deal with the series of strikes.

[zico]

Since none of us, nor the media, have seen Raab's phone log, we may be being unjust. This thread more ressembles a lynch mob than anything else.

TJH

It's very simple. Either it's OK for a Foreign Secretary to go on holiday during the biggest foreign policy crisis since the Falklands, refuse requests to make vital phone calls while on holiday, and refuse to cut short his holiday to deal with the crisis. Or it''s not.

Let's make it even simpler. Imagine instead of Dominic Raab, our Foreign Secretary was Emily Thornberry. Support Emily or sack her?

[Lootman]

Do you support Raab being sacked? Or do you honestly think that because a Labour Prime Minister didn't sack himself 42 years ago, that makes it OK for Raab to get away with being on the beach the day that Kabul fell?

For Raab to be sacked someone has to come up with what the alternative policy would and should have been, and how it would have been viable without US ground, air and naval support. The UK could not have protected all of Kabul on its own:

I agree. Why should he resign? There is nothing the UK could have done absent a US presence. Any UK forces would have been overrun.

[zico]

Do you support Raab being sacked? Or do you honestly think that because a Labour Prime Minister didn't sack himself 42 years ago, that makes it OK for Raab to get away with being on the beach the day that Kabul fell?

For Raab to be sacked someone has to come up with what the alternative policy would and should have been, and how it would have been viable without US ground, air and naval support. The UK could not have protected all of Kabul on its own:

Your attempted defence of Raab seems to be that it makes no difference whether he's doing his job or not!
If he's really that ineffectual, surely that's simply another reason for him to go?
Would you apply the same principle to Hancock - did someone have to prove his grope on camera led to more people getting Covid?

I'm really puzzled why you are even defending this guy. I know he's a hard-right Conservative who's keen on Brexit, but really - does that excuse anything? Or is it because he co-wrote a book saying Brits are lazy shirkers who'd rather be on the beach than working??

The terrible reality is that Afghan people who helped us (and possibly also British nationals) will die because of the lack of leadership and planning by our government, the Foreign Secretary is the person responsible for this area of government, and it's been a shambles. (There was a report from the Lords in Jan/Feb that raised the issue of a possible quick collapse once the US pulled out, and asked for the government to respond to their report, but guess what - no response, and as we now see, insufficient preparation by the government).

Your position is that in order to be sacked, it's not enough for someone to refuse to do their job, there also has to be some additional consequences.
So if a lifeguard abandons his post at a swimming pool and nobody drowns, then everything is fine - no negligence, nothing to see here?

[Lootman]

For Raab to be sacked someone has to come up with what the alternative policy would and should have been, and how it would have been viable without US ground, air and naval support. The UK could not have protected all of Kabul on its own:

Your attempted defence of Raab seems to be that it makes no difference whether he's doing his job or not! If he's really that ineffectual, surely that's simply another reason for him to go?

For Raab to be deemed "ineffectual" then it should at least be possible for you to formulate a policy option that was likely to be successful under the circumstances of the US leaving? And which he elected not to take?

What is/was that viable policy option? Describe it.

[SteMiS]

For Raab to be sacked someone has to come up with what the alternative policy would and should have been, and how it would have been viable without US ground, air and naval support. The UK could not have protected all of Kabul on its own:

Your attempted defence of Raab seems to be that it makes no difference whether he's doing his job or not!
If he's really that ineffectual, surely that's simply another reason for him to go?

You seem to be under the illusion that this is a relevant criteria. After all, it hasn't been a relevant criteria for Gavin Williamson or Priti Patel (or Suella Braverman, when she wasn't on maternity leave). Lootman is right; there was little Raab could do. After years of sucking up to Trump, the Conservatives have no influence in Washington and the EU don't trust us as far as they could throw us.

We could have course of put a plan in place to secure those Afghans who've risked their lives to help us, but of course, we don't really want to help them. Wouldn't go down well in Tory associations letting in more immigrants. So Patel came up with a plan to admit 20,000.....over the next few years, knowing full well most of them wouldn't make the next few years. Raab announced an increase in aid for Afghanistan; 'probably' a 10% increase on the £38.7m that they'd recently reduced...from £167.5m. Are you getting the message yet?

It's not just that they haven't got a clue what they are doing....they actually don't care.

I'm really puzzled why you are even defending this guy. I know he's a hard-right Conservative who's keen on Brexit...

So you're not really puzzled at all, are you...