Sunday 23 April 2023

Raab: Good riddance

The last few days have been filled with news about the resignation of Dominic Raab, something which I think he was forced to do against his own judgment. The graceless resignation letter and subsequent article in The Daily Telegraph are masterclasses in how not to do it. The tone only proves the conclusions of Tolley’s inquiry were absolutely right. He is not only a bully but an incompetent whinger as well.  He is the fourth of the five co-authors of Britannia Unchained to leave the cabinet in the last 7 months (the others being Liz Truss, Kwasi Kwarteng, and Priti Patel). The last one is Chris Skidmore MP for Kingswood. He would be well advised to start looking for new opportunities outside politics.

Raab and his allies are now suggesting he was forced out by "activist civil servants" whatever they are. 

“This precedent sets the playbook for a small number of officials to target ministers, who negotiate robustly on behalf of the country, pursue bold reforms and persevere in holding civil servants to account. If that is now the threshold for bullying in government, it is the people of this country who will pay the price.”

He writes as if the civil service is a fifth column out to make life difficult for ministers. This is typical paranoid Brexiteer rhetoric, isn’t it? The EU, the judiciary, remoaners, civil servants, lefty lawyers, the church, immigrants, and protesters are all plotting to thwart Brexit. 

Raab argued with Tolley about the terms of reference, nit-picked about virtually everything, and lied about his own actions. We know this because Tolley makes it clear he ‘preferred’ the evidence of others, particularly Sir Phillip Barton Permanent Under-Secretary of the Foreign Office, and Antonia Romeo, permanent secretary at the Justice Department. In other words, Tolley suspected Raab wasn’t being truthful.

I give you another glaring example. In The Telegraph, Raab (supposed to be a lawyer himself) writes

“Nevertheless, Mr. Tolley concluded that I had abused my position in relation to that official, having expressed my frustration at the lack of candour I received. He did not conclude it was intentional – which is the legal requirement under the definition of bullying.”

But bullying only being perceived as bullying if done intentionally is expressly NOT the legal requirement and I know this from paragraphs 53 and 54 of Tolley’s report, as Raab would if he had bothered to read it.  

Tolley uses a court case to determine the definition of bullying where "the Court accepted that there was a broad consensus that conduct would fall within the description of ‘bullying’ if it can be characterised as (1) Offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting behaviour; or (2) Abuse or misuse of power in ways that undermine, humiliate, denigrate or injure the recipient."

And Tolley went on: "It was expressly stated that conduct may fall within the first limb of the definition, and so constitute bullying within the meaning of paragraph 1.2 of the Ministerial Code, whether or not the perpetrator is aware or intends that the conduct is offensive, intimidating, malicious or insulting."

You can see the difference between what Tolley said and Raab's entirely false claim.

In any case, what has he achieved after several years in government? Does anyone actually know?

Someone tweeted an exchange in 2016 before the referendum where Raab questions the Foreign Office's permanent secretary Simon Fraser. Raab challenges the idea that after Brexit the UK would need MORE civil servants not FEWER:

Note how Raab asks and how Fraser responds to the question. The reply is entirely reasonable and accurate as subsequent events have proved and delivered with calm precision. But it isn't the answer Raab wanted and one can easily imagine him launching an attack on a civil servant trying to explain the reality behind the fantasy.

The very same Simon Fraser, now retired, tweeted:

The best take-down comes from Andrew Levi who tweeted  a long thread well-worth reading:

Adam Boulton has another excellent piece in Reaction Life about Raab's unpleasant behaviour being a symptom of mediocrity which I think is true and even flatters him.

Finally, Peter Foster the FT correspondent, recalls in a Twitter thread from 2019 how Raab, when he was Brexit secretary wasn't averse to massaging the truth to make his role seem more influential and important than it actually was.

Richard Littlejohn in The Daily Mail writes an exaggeratedly hate-filled column in support of Raab and talks about “…the widespread sense of entitlement throughout the public sector, where being asked politely to do the job you are paid for is considered akin to a hate crime.”

I suspect what happened on multiple occasions is that Raab threw a tantrum when gently told what he was demanding was impossible. Don’t forget he didn’t understand how much we relied on the Dover-Calais link for a huge chunk of our exports - and he was Brexit secretary at the time. I bet that truth had to be hammered in by activist civil servants.

Anyway, enough of Raab who will now pass into history. I noted this morning in The Sunday Times that there are more revelations about Boris Johnson during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, in Anthony Seldon's new book: Johnson at 10: The Inside Story, co-authored by Raymond Newell, to be published on 4 May.  

The then prime minister comes across as a complete idiot at all times. Seldon says: "He proved completely unsuited to the challenge that lay ahead. Few predecessors since Lloyd George would not have handled it better."

Thus confirming what we all knew.

A few quotes at random.  When he was isolating after catching Covid he worked remotely but:

"He was entirely unsuited to remote working and isolation, his early illness frequently breaking into farce. His fumbling constantly disconnected his iPad from Zoom and he was clueless as to how he could rejoin the meeting, so a series of connected iPads were set up. Once he had broken the first, he could grab the second, then third, then fourth."

Before that:

"On March 26, as a group of officials and aides waited to go into the prime minister’s study to brief him, they heard him hacking away behind the door, repeatedly, coughing and spluttering. “He’s got Covid, hasn’t he?” they murmured to each other nervously before he called them in. But they went into the airless room nevertheless. “Cleo [Watson] brought in some Lemsip for him, as if that was going to help. I thought vaguely this isn’t what we should have been doing. We all knew he was ill.”

At one point he fully intended to see the Queen for his weekly audience in that state and had to be persuaded not to go in person but use the 'phone.

"By the end of March, political aides in all areas were stretched to breaking point. “Cummings in particular had lost it, the pressure had really started getting to him. He’d sit at his desk, shouting and swearing at his computer,” says one official. “Dom got unhinged — or more unhinged than usual,” recalls another. “You had to be on your guard the whole time, he would switch from his rational analytical mode to absolutely apoplectic without warning.” The more stressful the situation, the more forceful Cummings became. Johnson, uncomfortable with such conflict, tended to withdraw and avoid challenging his senior adviser."

"Johnson returned no more consistent than ever, in the words of another official: “He wildly oscillated in what he thought. It became difficult when he took a decision to know whether it would hold and how much importance to give it, because so often he changed his mind.” Another recalls how “at one point, I had to show him the printout of what he had said in a meeting, because he was denying completely what he’d decided upon earlier that day now that he was unhappy about the decision”.

I can't wait for the inquiry to report, I really can't.

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