The man deputising for coronavirus-stricken UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson is a 46-year-old former lawyer, an ardent Brexiteer and a black belt in karate, who until three years ago was not in government but now leads the UK from Downing Street.
Educated in Oxford and Cambridge, Dominic Raab was first elected in 2010 from Esher and Walton in Surrey and held a junior ministerial role in the governments led by former PMs David Cameron and Theresa May, before being promoted as the Brexit secretary by May.
He resigned in protest against May’s Brexit deal in December 2018 and returned as the foreign secretary when Johnson became the prime minister in July 2019, dealing with India in his key role, particularly during the violence outside the Indian High Commission in late 2019.
Raab then interacted with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, deploring the violence outside the mission but also telling MPs in the House of Commons that the Kashmir dispute has implications for human rights.
Before entering politics, Raab, son of a Czech-born Jewish refugee who fled the Nazis in 1938, was a lawyer for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and appeared for various clients in international and competition law.
He ran against Johnson to become the leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister in 2019, criticising his personality style as ‘bluff and bluster’, but was eliminated in earlier rounds. He is married to Brazilian marketing executive Erika Ray and the couple has two sons.
