Enter Dominic – a baseball bat in a suit. Opponents best look away now

Dear old David Davis. No matter what pressure he was under, no matter how badly the Brexit talks were going, he always looked so relaxed, didn’t he? So sunny. So cuddly. So chummy and chucklesome. As if he hadn’t a care in the world. His successor, however, is rather different.

The opposite, in fact. Dominic Raab, the new Brexit Secretary, does not look cuddly, or chummy, or in the least bit chucklesome. He looks hard.

Pitilessly hard. In fact: he looks quite a lot like a baseball bat. A baseball bat in a suit.

Partly this is because of his features: so blunt and harsh, all cheekbone and jawbone and brow. Zero flab. Minimal hair. Just skin stretched tight over an unsmiling skull. Mainly, though, it’s because of his glare.

As far as I can tell, Mr Raab never blinks. Never blinks at all.

From deep in the sockets of his lidless eyes burns a glare of insomniac intensity. He looks as if he’s just had 10 shots of strong coffee pumped directly into his eyeballs. Lord knows how it feels to be an MP, having that glare trained on you each time you pluck up the courage to ask him a question. It must bore into you like a drill.

Yesterday, Mr Raab took his first ever hour of Brexit Questions. He was up against Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer. Sir Keir asked whether there was any

‘Skin stretched over an unsmiling skull...deep in his lidless eyes burns a glare of insomniac intensity’

reason to believe that a majority of MPS would back Theresa May’s plans.

Immediately he was trapped in the twin searchlights of Mr Raab’s glare.

“We’ve got a White Paper, I’m going to Brussels,” barked Mr Raab – accurately, if not quite relevantly.

Keeping his voice low, and doing his best to avoid eye contact, Sir Keir asked whether the Government was capable of standing up to its more troublesome backbenchers. Once again he was forced to shield himself from the full force of the glare. “I’m not interested in the media circus or the drama,” barked Mr Raab. “We’re unflinchingly focused!” Unflinchingly? More like unblinkingly.

A lot of MPS, mainly from Labour and the SNP, wanted to know what would happen to businesses, and to the public, if the UK left without a deal. Mr Raab’s team were vague on this score, however, with Chris Heaton-harris (another new Brexit minister) merely saying that a series of “technical notices” would be issued – but not just yet.

The plan, presumably, is to leave all this horrid talk of food rationing and medicine shortages until after MPS have had their summer recess. Well, you wouldn’t want to spoil anyone’s holiday.

The session complete, Mr Raab stormed off to Brussels for his first meeting with Michel Barnier, the European Union’s chief negotiator.

I hope Monsieur Barnier was adequately briefed about his new adversary. I’d be wary of shaking hands with a man who glares like that. He could snap your fingers like Twiglets.