For Dominic Raab, nothing so became him in office as the leaving of it. He resigned from his roles as justice secretary, lord chancellor and deputy prime minister after being judged to have broken the ministerial code for bullying civil servants. This was the finding reached in rather more lawyerly language by Adam Tolley KC. Over three months of interviews with 66 people, he examined complaints made during Mr Raab’s span as foreign secretary, justice secretary and Brexit secretary before delivering a damning verdict.
Despite being found to have acted in an “intimidating”, “insulting” and “aggressive” way with officials, Mr Raab suggested he was the real victim of a “Kafkaesque saga” in which he had faced an inquisition. His ungracious resignation letter, written in an apparent fit of pique, played into Brexiters’ permanent sense that their Gulliver was being tied down by Lilliputians in the civil service. In this alternative world, voters are disillusioned because the government is being constrained by people who have not been elected.
Rather than accepting responsibility for his behaviour, Mr Raab claimed in his missive that the inquiry would “have a chilling effect on those driving change on behalf of government – and ultimately the British people”. His opinion piece in the Daily Telegraph went further, alluding to a conspiracy of “unionised officials” threatening to bring down ministers. Mr Raab jumped before he was pushed out by the prime minister. Rishi Sunak’s pledge last October that he would run an administration that “will have integrity, professionalism and accountability at every level” would have been rendered empty if he had kept on a bully as his deputy.
The civil service is both an instrument of ministerial will and a check on ministerial whim. There is a strain of Brexit thinking which believes that being elected is enough to override cautious civil servants. Last November Gavin Williamson, who was Mr Sunak’s cabinet fixer, resigned over claims that he told a senior civil servant to “slit your throat” while he was defence secretary. Mr Raab’s transgressions are nowhere near that level of viciousness. Bullying is a difficult word to pin down. But the Tolley report reinforces the idea that the prime minister has a duty to correctly apply concepts such as bullying and harassment to ministers, with lack of intent not regarded as a legitimate excuse.
Mr Raab has enjoyed a luckier ministerial career than he deserved. He joined the cabinet in 2018 as Brexit secretary – only to resign four months later. He was moved after a disastrous stint as foreign secretary to the justice department, where his divisive and toxic spell in government has now ended. His replacement, Alex Chalk, has been welcomed – though the challenges he faces in clearing up the mess left by his predecessor are considerable. Mr Chalk is a barrister and a KC. His first act ought to be to drop Mr Raab’s bill of rights, which weakens protections, undermines the universality of rights and shows disregard for our international legal obligations.
Mr Raab’s exit from the cabinet is significant in that it heralds the changing of the guard in the Tory party. He was one of a group of unabashed Thatcherites who authored a slim manifesto for the future of Britain called Britannia Unchained in 2012. Mr Raab is the last to be forced out of office: Kwasi Kwarteng, Priti Patel, Chris Skidmore and Liz Truss have all gone too. Brexit has eaten its own children. Of the 10 candidates to be Tory party leader in 2019, seven are now out of the government. The new deputy prime minister – Oliver Dowden – is one of Mr Sunak’s key allies. This move may be a reflection of the prime minister’s growing confidence, but also reinforces the sense that time is limited and that too little has been achieved.
