DOMINIC Raab felt a feeling. It was a feeling he'd felt before, he felt.
Thinking hard, he realised what it was – a sensation that something had happened, something that he hadn't known was going to happen. It was surprise.
Dominic Raab thought it was surprising to feel surprised, but he just hadn't had the slightest idea that it would be bad timing for him, the Foreign Secretary, to leave for his holiday when something big was happening that was both foreign and involved the government he works for.
He was also surprised that so many people seemed surprised at his surprise.
Dominic Raab's eyes were wide. After he remembered how to blink, he came to a surprising conclusion – he had been surprised before.
And many of those occasions seemed to be work-related.
1) Dominic Raab is surprised by Afghanistan
"NO-ONE" saw the speedy Taliban take-over coming as a result of the withdrawal of UK and US troops, the Foreign Secretary says.
Which suggest there's either a paucity of good intel at Number 10, as the potential for a resurgent Taliban focused on political control was certainly a matter of debate in the weeks leading up to the change... OR that, well... Dominic Raab.
He was seen on a Greek beach on Sunday as Taliban members entered Kabul, The Telegraph reports, but says he came back "as soon as the situation deteriorated and demanded it".
"Everyone was caught off-guard by the pace, scale of the Taliban takeover," he said, adding that he'd been working really hard in Crete. Then he added some high-value Scrabble words in a sentence he was really proud of: "I think it is easy to say that with the benefit of hindsight, but the truth is you are always measuring a very fluid constellation matrix, if you like, of risk factors, and that is the reality."
2) Dominic Raab is surprised by the English Channel
AS Brexit Secretary, Raab learned a lot, particularly about geography and logistics.
"I hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing," he confidently told an event for tech firms in November 2018, a full two and a half years after the Brexit referendum.
"And that is one of the reasons why we have wanted to make sure we have a specific and very proximate relationship with the EU, to ensure frictionless trade at the border," he said, adding more of those good Scrabble words.
3) Dominic Raab is surprised by Brexit
"THERE is no set date for the negotiations to conclude," said a Foreign Office spokesperson in November 2018, which was clearly quite a busy month for Raab.
His boss had told a committee of MPs the Brexit deal was going to be finalised within a period of three weeks, telling them he'd "be happy to give evidence" to them "when a deal is finalised, and currently expect November 21 to be suitable".
At the time, talks had become deadlocked after the European Union objected to Theresa May’s plan to include all of the UK in a "backstop" to prevent Irish border checks, rather than just Northern Ireland.
In the end, it took another two years and one month for the negotiations to be finalised.
4) Dominic Raab is surprised by numbers
IN April 2018 – a vintage Raab year – then-housing-minister Dom claimed immigration had "put house prices up by something like 20%" over the previous 25 years.
The UK Statistics Authority asked the Conservative minister to publish the evidence for his claim. A document then published by Westminster's Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government revealed the claim was based on sums done using an out-of-date model that had never been intended for that kind of analysis.
Raab was surprised there had been any confusion: "I did indeed say care was needed with the data, and I was right that immigration put average prices up by 20%. We need a balanced approach."
5) Dominic Raab is surprised by the internet
RAAB did not know his personal mobile phone number had been freely available on the web for years, the Foreign Office said in June.
The department said his private details had been "wrongly retained online" since before he became an MP in 2010.
Raab, whose wife worked for Google for a number years, could possibly take some comfort in this one from knowing that Boris Johnson's digits had been on there too, remaining up for more than a decade.
The Foreign Office said: "Once we were made aware, we had it removed immediately. Most of it was out of date, and no security was compromised."
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