Dominic Raab - Shove The Excuses

So farewell then Dominic Raab, who has resigned his cabinet post, to the great relief of all those who wished it had happened rather earlier. This followed a report by Adam Tolley KC, and Raab’s assurance that he would resign if it upheld any claim of bullying against him. To be on the safe side, it upheld two claims. Worse, the conclusions were damning.

“He acted in a way which was intimidating, in the sense of unreasonably and persistently aggressive conduct in the context of a work meeting. It also involved an abuse or misuse of power in a way that undermines or humiliates … On a number of occasions at meetings with policy officials, the DPM acted in a manner which was intimidating, in the sense of going further than was necessary or appropriate in delivering critical feedback, and also insulting”.

As Sir Sean nearly said, I think we got the point. Tolley was putting it mildly and diplomatically. There was a telling coda: “The DPM has been able to regulate this level of ‘abrasiveness’ since the announcement of the investigation. He should have altered his approach earlier”. That’s how mild.

That much is bad, but what is worse for those who remain in Government, and especially Rishi Sunak, is that Raab, like Gavin “Stupid Boy” Williamson, and Nadhim Zahawi of heated stables on expenses infamy, was allowed to resign and was not sacked. Hence Sunak is also diminished by his now former deputy’s fall. This the right-wing press has failed to notice.

Then another thought enters: perhaps they do not want to notice, given their craven support for the Tories. Nor, it seems, do they want to notice that their man has not even bothered to apologise. As Tolley notes, “He has not offered any apology, given that he does not accept that he has done anything wrong”.

Some across the media back Raab unequivocally: the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog quoted Raab’s no-regret resignation letter claiming “Ministers must be able to give direct critical feedback on briefings and submissions to senior officials, in order to set the standards and drive the reform the public expect of us … In setting the threshold for bullying so low, this inquiry has set a dangerous precedent”.

And concurred. “He’s clearly right, the sheer intransigence and inertia of the bureaucracy requires a minister to drive change despite the civil service”. So they don’t know what they’re talking about, either (no change there). The inmates of the Northcliffe House bunker claim that Raab was “SHAFTED BY SNOWFLAKES”. But LBC host James O’Brien had a caution on that one.

“Everyone on the senior editorial staff at the Daily Mail will have witnessed or received a spittle-flecked ‘double-c*nting’ from Paul Dacre. Do bear this in mind when reading their coverage of Raab’s bullying” before reminding us “Boris Johnson is still trying to put Dacre in the House of Lords”.

Another media outlet that has ventured rather a long way up the Tories’ arsehole, the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, gave Raab a platform to right the wrong he claimed to have occurred. Lewis Goodall noted that “Raab has written a piece for the Telegraph saying the British people ‘will pay the price for this Kafkaesque saga.’ He says ‘this precedent will set the playbook for a small number of officials to target ministers.’”

Raab has since gone to the BBC and claimed to Chris Mason, and as Theresa May once said, I am not making this up, that “that ‘activist civil servants’ wanted to block the work of government with ‘passive-aggressive’ tactics”. Bullshit. Especially coming from someone whose record of ministerial accomplishment is not unadjacent to Sweet Fanny Adams.

It was left to Byline Times political editor Adam Bienkov to make the obvious conclusion: “That Raab’s behaviour has instead not just been tolerated, but actively defended by Sunak and his media supporters, tells us everything that we need to know about the rotten standards still dominating within this Government”. And the rotten standards of our right-wing press.

Dominic Raab was unfit for office. And he still is. Anyone say “by-election”?

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