Will Raab’s weakness be the thing that saves him from Johnson’s axe?

The prime minister sometimes seems to operate under the David Brent maxim of never appointing anyone as your deputy who could do the job better than you, writes Sean O’Grady

It’s fair to say the foreign secretary has had better weeks (Getty)

With no great sense of irony, the Labour Party, no stranger to internecine struggles, has accused the government of “fighting like rats in a sack” over the Afghan debacle. Still, it has a point. Even by this government’s leaky, backbiting standards the war of words over who is to blame for the mess continues. Of the various heavyweight rodents involved, it is Dominic Raab is is mostly getting his tail chewed, and looks increasingly uncomfortable in his role.

If you can be bored when at the centre of a global emergency, then Raab seems to have done it. Perhaps due to stress or the rigours of medium-haul flights, or perhaps the way he is being picked on, the foreign secretary, a man who prides himself on his physique, was looking rather tired during his press conference in Qatar. He remains his softly spoken self, but has the demeanour of a man who is simply fed up. His enemies claim that his lack of interest in Afghanistan and the region generally – rarely speaking to, let alone visiting, the major players such as Pakistan – contributed to the humanitarian and geopolitical disaster. At the podium in Doha, Raab displayed no great appetite for the reconstruction and refugee challenges ahead – even though his department swallowed the Department for International Development in a pointless power grab. Raab might not be interested in nation building, but he’s good at empire building.

He has only just partially recovered from his punishment beating at the hands of Tom Tugendhat and his Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, and about a fortnight of abuse from colleagues and the press over his ill-starred break in Crete and the previous months of unpreparedness. Yet the hostile briefings and even public statements continue. Downing Street and the Ministry of Defence are still putting the boot in. The defence secretary, Ben Wallace, claims that the foreign secretary should have known months ago (if he was paying attention) that the game was up in Afghanistan. No 10 has insisted that Boris Johnson has “full confidence” in Raab, which, in reality puts him in extreme jeopardy. Will the rat be chucked off the ship at the next reshuffle?