Raab comes out fighting

Dominic Raab is not budging in his conviction that he did everything he could for Afghanistan while he was on his Cretan holiday. The Foreign Secretary has issued a statement in which he argues that the recommendation from his civil servants to call the Afghan foreign minister was ‘quickly overtaken by events’ and that he passed the call onto a junior minister ‘because I was prioritising security and capacity at the airport’. He then argues that this priority ‘was the right one’ and points out the numbers of people who have been evacuated.

The focus on Raab’s holiday is in some ways out of proportion, connected perhaps to people’s feelings of general powerlessness at the crisis in Afghanistan. But on the other hand, it is an illustration of how the government was caught on the hop.