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Dominic Raab resigns: If ministers can’t deal with challenges, they’re the snowflakes [1]

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Date: 2023-04

Government ministers are responsible for taking crucial decisions in high-pressure situations, and it’s sometimes the job of civil servants to take the strain.

That means supporting ministers not only by anticipating and responding to requirements for briefing and advice, but also by absorbing pressure from distractions and other demands on ministers’ time so that they can focus all their energy on their work.

It does not mean having to be a pressure valve for uncontrolled rage or a target of controlling behaviour from someone who has to get their kicks from kicking down.

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Deputy prime minister Dominic Raab resigned on Friday morning in the wake of Adam Tolley KC’s official report into allegations that Raab had waged a campaign of bullying against civil servants. (Raab denied wrongdoing.) It comes two and a half years after then home secretary Priti Patel was found to have breached the ministerial code by bullying staff; government ethics adviser Alex Allan quit after then PM Boris Johnson decided to keep Patel on.

Some of Raab’s parliamentary colleagues had sought to minimise Tolley’s findings in advance ever since his investigation was announced. Jacob Rees-Mogg, Bernard Jenkin and others dismissed complaints against Raab as “snowflakey” and complainants as “very easily bullied”, shifting attention away from the substance of the allegations and what they say about a minister’s ability to run a department.

Raab made a similar claim in his resignation letter, saying the “threshold” for bullying had been set too low. That he was able to undermine the investigation (and the two findings against him) like this before Tolley’s conclusions had even been published further illustrates the unequal power relationship between ministers and officials, who are not at liberty to make public statements with their versions of events.

Repeatedly subjecting officials – in whose professional interest it is to serve ministers well – to behaviour that aggressively belittles and undermines them undoubtedly inflicts damage on individuals that, more often than not, goes untold.

But using that behaviour, or the threat of it, to set the tone of a private office must ultimately inflict damage on the minister.

Moving staff away from their assigned roles with problematic ministers, or moving more senior staff in to shield colleagues in their dealings with them – as has allegedly happened in Raab’s office – consumes time, energy and other resources that government departments don’t have to spare.

And it’s an ineffective way of addressing the problem anyway: whichever officials are parachuted into private office, they will be working for a minister who is unduly fazed by minor obstructions, and who resorts to tactics of aggression and intimidation in order to communicate his needs to staff.

It must be difficult for anyone who works in such an environment to give of their best, and no staff move or office reorganisation can resolve the question of whether a minister who cannot be reasonable in day-to-day interactions is secure and resilient enough to hold office with confidence and trust. Who’s the snowflake here?

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dominic-raab-bullying-report-adam-tolley-kc-rishi-sunak/

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