Who Is Dominic Raab? Meet The UK's New Brexit Secretary

Very much a Brexiteer, and very much on the Right of the Conservative party’s politics, the 44-year-old is a hard-headed pragmatist who has long impressed his predecessor and other Tory MPs.

The King is dead, long live the King? Dominic Raab, David Davis's Cabinet replacement, is in many ways a younger, fresher version of the Brexit Secretary.

Very much a Brexiteer, and very much on the Right of the Conservative party's politics, the 44-year-old is a hard-headed pragmatist who has long impressed his predecessor and other Tory MPs.

Whereas Davis was famously an SAS reservist, Raab is a black belt at karate. The pair share a passionate belief in civil liberties.

Raab got his first big break when he was hired as Davis's chief-of-staff in 2006. Davis had been made Shadow Home Secretary in the wake of his leadership defeat to David Cameron and needed a "smart, tough" aide to sort out his office.

Raab, an Oxford-educated Foreign Office lawyer, was seen as the perfect fit. He became a key member of "Team DD".

It was while working for Davis that he earned his spurs within the party, learning his trade in how Parliament and politics interacted. When Davis quit, he stayed on as chief-of-staff for replacement Dominic Grieve, who has subsequently become a key "Remainer" rebel whom the PM needs to keep onside.

In 2010, at the age of 36, Raab then won the plum Tory seat of Esher and Walton, replacing the fiercely pro-EU Ian Taylor with his own Eurosceptic strand of Conservatism.

Michael Gove, Dominic Raab and David Davis during the EU referendum
Michael Gove, Dominic Raab and David Davis during the EU referendum
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