Dominic Raab and the problem of ‘distraction’

Dominic Raab blamed distraction for Boris Johnson’s woes when the Tories failed in two by-elections last week. ‘He has track records as long as his arm of misinformation and propaganda and this is a distraction from the real issues.’

Oh, no, I beg your pardon, that was what Mr Raab said about Vladimir Putin in March. What he said about the by-elections was: ‘I think we’ve had distractions because of partygate, because of too much Westminster internal, if you like, focus.’

Mr Raab hates distractions. They seem to drive him to distraction. ‘It’s a big distraction from the bread and butter issues,’ he said of June’s party vote of confidence in Mr Johnson. And in May when the Tories did badly in local elections he said ‘We’ve got to get rid of those distractions’, as though the room was suddenly full of mosquitos.

It had been no better in 2020. Asked about President Trump’s remarks on the death of George Floyd he said: ‘I think all it does is create a distraction from all the things that we’re doing.’

Christian authors had long advised carefully about distractions in prayer. ‘Harde it is to say one Pater noster without distraction of the mynde,’ wrote William Bonde, a good monk of Syon Abbey, by the Thames opposite today’s Kew Gardens. A copy of his Pylgrimage of Perfection (1526) owned by the Queen bears Queen Victoria’s bookplate.

Lord Chesterfield, that stickler for manners, knew nothing ‘more offensive to a company, than inattention and distraction’. He wouldn’t have liked mobile phones at the table. But by the 19th century distractions could be entertaining, like diversions. Yet, since distraction comes from distrahere, ‘to pull asunder’, it could be as bad mentally as being dismembered by wild horses. Robert Burton confronted this in The Anatomy of Melancholy and saw that in some cases distraction might work to good. For those with anxious or intrusive thoughts, chess could ‘distract their mind, and alter their meditations: invented (some say) by the general of an army in a famine, to keep soldiers from mutiny’. There is a Chess Room in the House of Commons. Perhaps it should be better used.