Dominic Raab ‘will be “toast” at the next reshuffle’ as critics predict Boris Johnson will sack the ‘control freak’ Foreign Secretary over his handling of Afghanistan withdrawal
- Government sources claim Dominic Raab will be ‘toast’ at next Cabinet reshuffle
- Mr Raab is facing mounting criticism amid Whitehall blame game over Kabul exit
- Foreign Office also under fire as critics claim its response has been ‘flat-footed’
Dominic Raab will be ‘toast’ at Boris Johnson’s next Cabinet reshuffle because of his handling of the UK’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, it was claimed today.
The Foreign Secretary is increasingly being tipped to be axed amid an escalating Whitehall blame game.
Allies of Mr Raab believe he is being lined up by other departments as the ‘fall guy’ after Britain completed its chaotic exit from Kabul.
Mr Raab is expected to launch a fight back and defend his record when he faces a grilling in front of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee on Wednesday this week.
A senior Government source claimed Dominic Raab will be ‘toast’ at the next Cabinet reshuffle
Boris Johnson is not expected to imminently shake up his top team but reports have suggested that Mr Raab could be replaced by Minister for the Cabinet Office Michael Gove
One senior Government source told The Times: ‘I think he is toast in the next reshuffle. It is a poorly led organisation with a control freak in charge who won’t delegate anything. Officials are terrified of him.’
Allies of Mr Raab hit back and said it is ‘laughable’ to try to pin all of the Government’s Afghanistan-related failures on the Foreign Secretary.
Pointing the finger at other departments, they said the Ministry of Defence had failed to accurately predict how quickly the Taliban would seize control of the country while the Home Office had been slow to finalise the Afghan resettlement scheme.
A Cabinet reshuffle is not believed to be imminent. Reports have suggested that Mr Raab could eventually be replaced by Michael Gove, the Minister for the Cabinet Office.
The Foreign Office is increasingly under fire over its response to the Afghanistan crisis.
Today it was claimed the department had been slow to talk to the countries surrounding Afghanistan about setting up safe routes for refugees.
One minister told The Telegraph: ‘The diplomatic effort has been slightly flat-footed. We should have been further down this road by now.
‘There’s a big job of work to be done in the region and it’s frustrating it’s not more advanced.’
A senior Tory MP told the newspaper that the Foreign Office is ‘seen as a basket case’.
Mr Raab faced criticism earlier this month after he delayed his return from a luxury break at a five-star resort in Crete as the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated.
He insisted last week that he was not ‘lounging around on the beach’ while Kabul fell and was ‘engaged from a hotel room’.
However, Mr Raab admitted that ‘with the benefit of hindsight I wouldn’t have gone away’.