16 Things to Know About Dominic Raab, the UK's Temporary Leader

With Boris Johnson incapacitated by COVID-19, Dominic Raab – the Foreign Secretary and First Secretary of State, essentially the UK's de facto second in command – is taking on prime ministerial duties.

Johnson was taken to the ICU at St Thomas' Hospital, London on Monday night, and remains there this morning – though is reportedly not on a ventilator. Until he's recovered, Raab – who has twice tested negative for the novel coronavirus – will chair Cobra meetings, make decisions on lockdown conditions and, ultimately, lead the country through one of the biggest emergencies it has faced in decades.

Just weeks ago, no one could have seen this coming, so to bring you up to speed, here is everything you need to know about Johnson's "designated survivor".

Born in Buckinghamshire to a Czech-Jewish refugee father in 1974, Dominic Rennie Raab is a former lawyer who became a cabinet minister less than three years ago, when Theresa May named him Brexit secretary. He is grammar school educated and studied at both Oxford and Cambridge universities. He has been the MP for Esher and Walton since 2010, and became Foreign Secretary in July of 2019. He's married to a Brazilian marketing executive and together they have two sons.

Apparently, the prospect of Raab standing in for Johnson went down "like a cup of cold sick" among his cabinet foes, according to Katy Balls, The Spectator's deputy political editor.

Raab was eyeing up the top job in 2019, and ran against Johnson in the Tory party leadership race. He was, however, eliminated in the second round of voting by MPs. Raab went on to endorse Johnson.

A 2011 book co-authored by Raab suggested people should be charged directly for NHS services and patients be called "customers". Raab later claimed he had "never advocated privatisation".

"The typical user of food banks," according to Raab in 2017, "is not someone who is languishing in poverty, it is someone who has a cash flow problem." The Trussell Trust, whose figures Raab had the temerity to claim were the basis for his declaration, says the number of food parcels given out across the UK has surged by 73 percent in five years – which would mean an awful lot of households with "cash flow problems". David Lammy, Labour's new Shadow Justice Secretary, branded Raab "horrendously ignorant and out of touch" at the time.

Hours before the government released a publication in response to a report criticising "exploitative unpaid internships" in 2018, Raab advertised an unpaid internship.

Another book co-authored by Raab, this time in 2012, argues against workers' rights, while a 2011 paper saw him advocating that start-ups should be freed of the burden of having to pay the minimum wage to under-21s, or give parental leave. He also called for the Working Time Regulations to be scrapped.

Just a year into his political career, Raab managed to piss off women nationwide by saying: "Feminists are now amongst the most obnoxious bigots." The then-Home Secretary, and his future boss, Theresa May, accused him of "gender warfare".

Of course, he then pleaded with us to spare a thought for the men, who "from the cradle to the grave", are getting a "raw deal". There is no room for "double standards" in his vision of equality.

When a disabled woman told Raab on live TV in 2017 about tens of thousands of disabled people dying every year because of health and social care cuts, he responded that pleas for support were "just a childish wish list".

As a hardline Brexiteer, Raab was a prominent campaigner for Vote Leave before the 2016 referendum. He became Brexit secretary in July of 2018.

The Eurosceptic Raab somehow thought it wise to admit in November of 2018, while he was still Brexit Secretary, that he hadn't quite understood how reliant we are on the vital Dover-Calais crossing when it comes to trade.

A week later, he quit as Brexit Secretary because of "fatal flaws" in the draft Brexit deal he had helped May to negotiate with the EU.

When asked in February of 2019 if he had read the Good Friday Agreement – a document fairly important to Brexit negotiations – in its entirety, Raab conceded he had not. He said of the 35-page document, which helped signal the end of The Troubles in Ireland, "It's not like a novel, you sit down you say, 'Do you know what over the holidays… this is a cracking read’.”

As housing minister, in April of 2018, Raab said immigration had forced house prices up by 20 percent over the past 25 years. The UK Statistics Authority asked him to provide evidence for his claim, and it transpired that it was based on an out-of-date model.

Raab gets a Pret a Manger chicken caesar and bacon baguette, superfruit pot and the vitamin volcano smoothie for lunch every day, an aide said in 2018 (Raab called this "nonsense" and "tittle tattle"). Let us hope his future isn't as grimly predictable as his lunches.

@emilysgoddard