On Thursday we saw a rather different Dominic Raab. For every other appearance fronting up the daily Downing Street press briefing, we’ve had the Colonel Kurtz foreign secretary. The full-on madman with vein throbbing in his forehead. Ready to mix it with his own shadow and now so far gone he was almost longing for the police to arrest him.
Now, though, Dom was a great deal more chilled. Even to the point of being totally boring. He could make a more than acceptable de facto prime minister yet. It’s amazing what a 7% solution of beta blockers and Mogadon can achieve. From tense and nervous and I-can’t-relax psycho killer to suburban Rotarian in one very slow heartbeat. No need for anyone to run, run, run, run, run, run, run away. This was Raab as the chartered surveyor who had received a series of unexpected promotions simply by turning down every project as being too risky. That way, he would never get to be proved wrong. Dom: the Man who likes to say “No”.
There again, Raab had managed to slow down both his metabolism and his thought processes so much that he was now actually at least seven days behind the rest of the country. On the plus side, he’s still got a sunny Easter weekend to look forward to. It’s been evident to anyone with the hint of a pulse for over a week now that there was no chance of the government lifting any of its lockdown measures anytime soon. You’ve only had to see the daily fatality figures to know that. But Dom still managed to make the announcement as if it was breaking news. Perhaps it was to him.
Mind you, Raab did hedge his bets a bit by saying that the restrictions would initially remain in place for another three weeks. It sounded as if he was hoping the prime minister might be back in action by then, so that it would be Boris Johnson and not him who would have to break it to a stir-crazy nation that the three weeks might then turn into another three weeks. And then another three weeks after that.
Clearly the government believes the country can only take three weeks of bad news at any one time. Shame Boris rather gave the game away last month by saying the quarantine could last three months. No one should be making too many plans for before the end of June at the earliest.
The foreign secretary had also cannily taken a leaf out of Matt Hancock’s book. Two weeks ago the secretary for health and social care – that’s the bit he tends to forget about and gets tacked on as an afterthought – had grandly announced his “Five Pillars” for the NHS that sounded authoritative and had gone down well with the public. Even though no one – not even Tigger – could any longer remember what any of those five pillars had been.
So Dom decided to go big, think outside of the box even, by coming up with his Five Tests that would determine the basis on which the government would consider easing restrictions. Information that had hitherto been considered so top secret that neither Rishi Sunak nor Hancock had been able to share it with the nation when asked at press conferences earlier in the week. So here was Raab, playing it straight and looking the country directly in the eyes. Even if his own were half closed due to the near lethal cocktail of drugs he had injected half an hour earlier.
First, things would have to get a bit better in some areas. Second, things would have to get a bit better in other areas. Tests three, four and five followed along similar lines. The Five Tests were literally what anyone could have worked out for themselves. At another time, it might have been a worry that it had taken the cabinet so long to state the obvious. But nowadays we have become accustomed to have “being dim” and “slow react” priced in to every government decisions.
The briefing had always been meant to be dull and matter-of-fact, to lure everyone into a state of narcolepsy. But realising it had been rather flatter and more depressing than intended and that there were still no answers as to why Germany and South Korea appeared to be handling the crisis so much better, Raab belatedly tried to find a few positives. The health secretary had finally remembered care homes existed and was going to get each and every one of them to pay for a shiny, superhero Green Badge that could instantly repel the coronavirus.
Towards the end, Raab became slightly punchier as the drugs wore off. Though he couldn’t bring himself to wholly defend the World Health Organization – he might get ticked off by Donald Trump or Boris if he did – he did say that the UK might have to rethink its relationship with China once the crisis was over.
This on the same day the prime minister’s press spokesman had said the UK would be better off dealing with the pandemic without being held back by EU regulations. Hell, if he felt like that why not go the whole hog and scrub the facade of the trade negotiations and end transition now. Fantastic. The UK’s answer to a global catastrophe was to go it alone. Who needed some vaccine made by foreigners? This was Britannia Unchained. Now where had Dom heard that phrase before?
