Dominic Raab 10 Personal Facts, Biography, Wiki
Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain Born: February 25, 1974 (age 47 years), Buckinghamshire, United Kingdom Spouse: Erika Raab Party: Conservative Party Office: Member of Parliament of the United Kingdom since 2010 Previous offices: Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs of the United Kingdom (2019–2021) Education: Jesus College, University of Cambridge, Dr Challoner’s Grammar School, University of Cambridge Raab is married to Erika Rey, a Brazilian marketing executive who until 2020 worked for Google. They have two children, and live in Thames Ditton, Surrey. Raab holds a black belt, third dan in karate.
Dominic Raab 10 Pics, Photos, Pictures
Dominic Raab 10 Fast Facts, Biography, Wiki
First Secretary of State, Dominic Raab, has stepped into Boris Johnson’s shoes as de facto Prime Minister as his boss is treated for coronavirus in hospital. Relatively little-known outside of his party until last year, when he ran for leader of the Conservatives against Mr Johnson, Raab has been an MP for Esher and Walton since 2010 and was in-and-out of government under former PM Theresa May as Brexit Secretary. But who is the so-called ‘designated survivor’? Born in Buckinghamshire in 1974, he is the son of an English mother and Jewish immigrant father, who came to Britain from Czechoslovakia in 1938 aged six following the Munich Agreement, which gave parts of the country to Nazi Germany. Sadly, his father died when Raab was only 12 years old, but there’s no doubt his experiences shaped him. In an interview with the Times last year, he explained the impact of his father’s past on him, including the fact that his relatives that remained in Czechoslovakia perished in the Holocaust, saying: ‘I was brought up with a sense of the precariousness of life because my dad came here as a refugee. My grandma came over with my dad and her husband in 1938. When we were growing up she would often weep into her goulash and strudel about the fact that she’d left her parents behind, so that bit of history was very personal to us.’ After going to school at Dr Challoner’s Grammar School, he attended Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, studying Law. While there, he captained the karate team (he has a black belt), before continuing his Law studies at Jesus College, Cambridge gaining a Masters Degree in International Law. He went on to train as a solicitor at Linklaters, working abroad on secondments at Liberty (the human rights NGO) and in Brussels advising on EU and WTO law. In 2000, he started working for the Foreign Office, leading a team of the British Embassy at the Hague that was dedicated to bringing war criminals to justice – something that no doubt was close to his heart. One of his most notable projects during his time working for the Foreign Office was when he defended Tony Blair against a subpoena from former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević. His political career began in earnest in 2006, when he was Chief of Staff to Shadow Home Secretary David Davis and to Shadow Secretary of State for Justice Dominic Grieve. It was during this period that Raab met his wife, Brazilian beauty and former Google marketing executive, Erika Rey, at a party with friends. She revealed in an interview with the Times in 2019 that it was ‘love at first sight’ but that he almost blew it, saying: ‘He actually made a big mistake. It was a week after Brazil had knocked England out of the World Cup and he asked if I was from Argentina. If you are from Brazil, that is bad’. The couple did long-distance for a year with Miss Rey living in Madrid, but Raab proposed on Christmas Eve 2004, with the couple marrying soon after, although the exact date is not publicly known. They have two sons – Peter and Joshua – who are both bilingual speaking English and Portuguese. He was elected to the safe Conservative seat of Esher and Walton with 58.9% of the vote in 2010, and has remained MP there ever since, commuting to work from Thames Ditton within his constituency. He was an active Brexiteer during the EU referendum, saying: ‘We’ll be better off if we’re freed up to trade more energetically with the growth markets like Latin America and Asia. I think it will be good for job creation and also cut prices in the stores.’ He was therefore a shoe-in for the role of Brexit Secretary in Theresa May’s 2018 government, but he left after disagreeing with her deal for Brussels. In 2019, he ran for leader of the Conservative Party, but was eliminated in the second round, finishing in sixth place. He threw his support behind Boris Johnson – his future boss – and was given the role of Foreign Secretary in his government, giving him the additional title of Secretary of State. In March, it was revealed that he would depustise for the PM during the coronavirus crisis should something happen to him, taking us right up to his present day position as designated survivor.
