I witnessed the Afghan evacuation scandal – Raab should have been sacked there and then

Junior staff with no experience of Afghanistan were left to make life-or-death decisions, writes Kim Sengupta

Raab did not return from his holiday in Crete, instead delegating tasks to junior ministers (AP)

When in a disagreement with officials in the Foreign Office, Dominic Raab would sometimes roll his shoulders like a boxer about to start a bout in the ring, recounted one of the civil servants who had been in that situation.

Asked how he had responded, the official said: “I rolled my shoulders back. Raab looked a bit confused, but quietened down. That gave me a chance to explain what the team was putting forward. It was a policy matter, actually something not that controversial, and it was sorted out, but one needed to tackle this combative attitude.”

The official, engaged in work pertaining to the security role of the Foreign Office, was, unlike Raab, not a karate black belt, or an Oxford boxing blue. But he had been in difficult circumstances in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, and was not fazed by displays of petulant belligerence – though he accepted that some colleagues may have been upset by aspects of the foreign secretary’s behaviour.