Raab brings Tories to their feet with emotive speech about father fleeing Nazis

Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab was given a standing ovation after telling the Tory Party conference that he would fight anti-Semitism to his “last breath” in tribute to his father, who fled Nazi Europe.

Mr Raab warned that “extremists” in the Labour Party were overseeing a rise in anti-Semitism and said they wanted to do away with a “free and tolerant democracy”.

He said: “I say to Labour: you’d be surprised how many British people take this personally.

“They know things that you choose to forget. Eighty years ago – 1938 – Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, the lucky few fled, some of them to Britain.

“One Jewish family arrived in England with a little boy called Peter, he was six years old and he spoke no English.

“That little boy grew up knowing that his grandmother, grandfather, most of his relatives, the loved ones left behind had been systematically murdered for no other reason than that they were Jews.”

He added: “That little boy learnt English, he got into a grammar school and grasped the opportunities and embraced the tolerance that our great country offers.

“He became a food manager at Marks & Spencer and married a clothes buyer, a Church of England girl from Bromley.

“But he never forgot what had happened to his family.

“That little boy was my father and I will honour his memory by fighting the scourge of anti-Semitism and racism until my last breath.”